


Vergissmeinnicht

by shittyfoureyes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Bullying, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort, Consent, Death, Docking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Consent, First Time, Flashbacks, Fluff, Fluff and Mush, Foreskin Play, Grief/Mourning, Homelessness, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Levi/Eren Yeager-centric, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Masturbation, Memories, Modern Era, Mushy, Mutual Masturbation, Past Character Death, Pet Names, Post-Canon, Praise Kink, Reincarnation, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Second Chances, Slurs, Soulmates, Suicide, Switching, ereri, versatile
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-06 05:31:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 50,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4209762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shittyfoureyes/pseuds/shittyfoureyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi and Eren are reunited after 2,000 years to find out what has changed, and what might always stay the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Why are you crying?

 

  
_"Captain! Leave it! It's too late!"_  
  
_"Captain, we have to move! You have to get up!"_  
  
_"Behind you!!"_

\---

 

The whole of humanity has endured behind the safety of the walls for generations, though much has changed in the centuries since mankind was forced to seek refuge within them. The advancement of technology could not be impeded forever, and over the years society has modernized. Great leaps in progress were made in every field; medicine, military technology, industry, history, even religion. Through all of these new discoveries, mankind has found the means to thrive. Humans have been able to expand their territory far beyond the reach of the three original walls.  
  
While human society has advanced, strengthened, and reclaimed more of the land they once inhabited, they are still caged, for outside those great walls remains the horror that has always trapped them there.  
  
Titans.  
  
More than that horror was the discovery made by the Survey Corps when they still existed: The humans living behind the walls really _were_ the last ones left. Many fear, as they always have, that humanity may never triumph over the titans. It's a fear that grows stronger with each generation. Many are complacent despite their fear, but there are those who still fight that seemingly inevitable fate.  
  
Even with every new weapon, each more powerful than the last, and every new defense constructed, the titan threat is no closer to being eliminated. Whenever the military fights a great battle, killing hundreds if not thousands of titans in their endless war, the titans only come back stronger, smarter, and in even greater numbers. It seems as though every soldier lost in action is replaced with one more titan they have to fight.

Those great battles have been numerous. Countless lives have been lost in humanity's fruitless struggle against the titans. It's only natural, then, that very few people would willingly enlist, knowing that they will die in vain. That attitude is so common amongst those of fighting age that the military eventually instated a draft in order to maintain the necessary number of boots on the ground. Every parent dreads their child's fifteenth birthday.

Regardless, humanity is much safer than it once was, even with all of the new dangers that they face. There are early warning systems now- sirens, in particular - sounding whenever the possibility of a breach might occur, or whenever a titan is sighted within the cities, and people are able to take shelter in underground bunkers impenetrable by titans before disaster strikes.  
  
Safety from rogue titans is a reassuring thought, but everyone knows the danger is not entirely gone. There are now groups that sympathize with the titans and whose aim is to suppress humanity, their eventual goal to establish an entirely titan society. They target the shelters, transforming inside them to eat the humans sheltering within. If they survive inside long enough, (each shelter having several military guards stationed there to keep the peace) they even attempt to turn people with injections of titan serum that has become available on the black market. Attacks on the walls are less common, but still a concern for those living in the outer cities.  
  
But, life goes on, as it must. People carry out their day-to-day routines even with the fear lurking in the back of their minds. They shop, they cook, they run their businesses, they play games and entertain themselves, they fight, they create, they sing and dance, they marry and have children, and they send their children to school to learn of all the things they themselves didn't learn in school when they were younger.  
  
Life even goes on in the peaceful community that exists upon what was once the ruins of a notorious ancient city, a famous one, one that the history books say was once called Shiganshina.

 

\---

 

A boy emerges from a crowd of people exiting the front doors of a large brick building. It's a school. A high school, to be exact. The students around him chat happily with their friends, laughing and shoving each other, bumping into others near them who are less amused at their antics.  
  
That one boy, however, does not bear that same youthful look of joy. He walks silently, alone, green eyes dull and downcast. The others have dispersed, marching like lines of ants down the streets and sidewalks towards their homes, or their friends homes, or to places to entertain themselves in the company of others, leaving the somber boy with the green eyes to sit in solitude as he occupies his usual spot.  
  
He is always alone.  
  
In front of the school is a statue. It's a large statue, the figure of a man standing triumphantly atop a prone body, sword raised skyward, cape fluttering behind him. Around him flowers are planted, blooming petals of pure white nestled in deep green leaves. It's a beautiful sight, a monument to a hero lost to the ages. That is where the boy sits, crossing his legs on the bench that bears a memorial plaque praising that brave and noble hero. The boy turns to face the statue, a worn, leather-bound book and pen resting on his lap.  
  
Every day this boy sits before the hero's statue, writing or drawing in that little book he carries. He doesn't always open the book. There are days when he simply sits and rests in its company, and others when he talks to the statue as if it were alive and listening, as if it could respond. His classmates always ridicule him when they see him doing this, but he's long learned to tune them out. It is not something they can ever understand. It's something that he's spent too much time explaining.  
  
Besides, it isn't all that unusual to do such a thing. Some people do the same to images of their gods, saying prayers and asking for blessings. He believes in no gods, yet sometimes there is still a prayer on his lips. A wish. With the wishes come tears, and when he says goodbye, he always strokes the foot of the statue, a smooth spot worn there as evidence of years and years of this same action.  
  
And so the boy sits, his mouth moving as he speaks quietly to the replica of the soldier. He pays no attention to his surroundings, purposefully willing away the cruel world around him. His back is turned to the street and he sees only the figure of the long-dead man in front of him.  
  
That's why he doesn't notice the footsteps behind him, or the gasp, or the thump of something soft but heavy being dropped to the ground.  
  
It's only when he hears the thing that shocks him, stops his heart, causes his hand to lose its hold on his pen that clatters to the ground beside him, only then that reality returns to him.  What he's heard... is a voice.  
  
A deep voice. A familiar voice, though the waver in the words it says, a familiar phrase spoken in a long-dead tongue, is unfamiliar. It's hesitant, a question carried on barely a breath, but he hears it nonetheless.  
  
" _… Mein Schätzchen_."  
  
His body reacts on its own, rapidly turning toward the source of those words he'd heard exclusively in his dreams.  
  
And this must be a dream, he thinks, as he struggles to comprehend the beautiful apparition he sees, surely an illusion created by his disturbed mind. Yet he speaks, some dormant instinct surfacing in him, a response on his tongue before he even realizes he's whispering the reply he's always given.  
  
" _… Meine Füchschen._ "  
  
Illusions and apparitions aren't solid. The lips against his are.  
  
They are too warm, too firm, too _alive_ to be a figment of his imagination. The weathered hands that firmly grip his face, the hot, salty liquid streaming from both green and grey to meld with the familiar taste of the lips pressed to his own, the comforting scent he knew he loved but existed only in the deepest recesses of his subconscious mind until this very moment. All of them are far too real. They were only dreams before but now they are flesh and bone, blood and breath and life.  
  
No. He understands now. They were never dreams at all.  
  
They were memories.

 


	2. Your hair has gotten longer.

 

  
_“What did you just say?”_  
  
_“Cap-... Captain… Captain, we have to go or it’ll be all of us!”_  
  
_“Get up! Two more are headed this way! You can’t… It’ll slow you down!”_  
  
_“WHAT. DID YOU. JUST SAY.”_

  
  
_——_

  
  
There they stood like statues themselves, their entwined bodies casting a single shadow in the afternoon sun as they kissed and cried together. Time had stopped for them and the world had ceased to exist. All else faded away; the only thing extant for them was that they were reunited, finally, _finally_.  
  
Soon their lips parted to draw gasping breaths, lungs regrettably giving out. Though their kiss had ended, there was something better to take its place. The chance to gaze upon each other’s faces for the first time in this new life, for the first time in _centuries_.  
  
Shaking hands traced incredulous faces and misty eyes darted about, unable to decide where to settle, what to look upon next. The green eyes soon paused. Staring, confused.  
  
“Levi… You look…. different.”  
  
Fingers ran through long, black hair, gently brushing out knots. Captain Levi had always been perfectly groomed, neat, clean, well-dressed.  
  
“My hair?” A nod from the green-eyed boy confirmed.  
  
“Yeah, and… You dress differently. Obviously, but…”  
  
And then the boy froze, realization dawning on him when his foot nudged the large backpack that had been dropped to the ground earlier.  
  
“Levi, you’re… Are you…?”  
  
“Homeless.”  
  
The boy gasped, lost for words.  
  
“How?”  
  
“That’s a long story,” Levi muttered as he ran his own fingers through his hair, cringing at how dirty it was.  
  
“You’re not anymore," Eren stated firmly, brushing a few long, black locks behind Levi's ear as he did so.  
  
He continued to stare into the face of his Captain, and upon noticing Levi’s discomfort, he instantly offered words of reassurance.  
  
“You’re still as beautiful as you always were,” he said, his thumb stroking over that fine cheekbone as it used to do so long ago. “I’m just so happy to see you again. And besides, anything is better than that,” he paused, motioning with his thumb and a jerk of his head to the statue behind them.  
  
“I’m better than a statue covered in bird shit. Thank you for the compliment, Eren.”  
  
Eren laughed. “Are you serious? Are you fucking _serious_?”  
  
“I fail to see what’s so funny about—“  
  
“Look!” Eren pointed to the statue again. “Did you really not notice? Don’t you realize where you are?”  
  
Levi sighed. It’s true, he didn’t know where he was. He knew that he’d just arrived in what he assumed was once Shiganshina based on its proximity to the preserved ruins of Wall Maria, and something, some feeling he couldn’t explain was telling him that it was.  
  
He rolled his eyes but did as he was told, examining the statue that Eren deemed to be both hilarious and important. Nothing about it looked unusual. It was a statue of a soldier in 3D Maneuver Gear near a dead titan. He’d seen plenty of these types of monuments in his years of traveling and this one seemed no different than the others.  
  
“It’s a soldier. Probably one who died a horrible death. Is that what you wanted me to see?”  
  
“Levi, that’s _you_. That’s a statue of _you_.”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous, Eren, that thing looks nothing… like… m—“ Levi’s words trailed off as he further examined the statue. He was squinting at its face, scrutinizing the details, but something just beyond it caught his eye. A building. A high school, the letters over the wide front doors proclaimed in huge gold letters.  
  
ACKERMAN HIGH SCHOOL  
  
“What… the… fuck…”  
  
Eren laughed again at Levi’s expression, jaw slack in shock and disbelief. He felt joy rise within him as Levi began to understand that it was named in his honor. That he was a hero to everyone and his name was remembered through the millennia, the greatest soldier in the history of the Survey Corps.  
  
“Well,” Levi cleared his throat, regaining his composure. “They named a school after me. Ironic. Do you go here?”  
  
“Yeah, I do. And every day after school I… I come here and sit with you.” Eren looked a little teary-eyed as he told Levi how he’d spent years talking to a statue, alone. “It’s the only thing I have of you. Even if it wasn’t really you, I just.. I needed to be near you.” He hiccups. “I've dreamed about you every night for as long as I can remember. I’ve missed you so much.”  
  
Levi pulled Eren against him, arm wound securely around his waist. Still gazing at the statue that looked nothing like him, he rested his head on Eren’s shoulder and swallowed down the lump in his throat, though the emotion he was attempting to hide was still evident in his soft voice.  
  
“I did too.”  
  
Eren nuzzled his face into the shorter man’s hair, still as dark and smooth and glossy as he remembered.  
  
“Don’t. I smell.”  
  
“You smell good. I’ve always loved the way you smell, especially when you’re a little dirty.”  
  
“Gross.”  
  
And Eren’s laugh was like music to him, the most beautiful song to ever grace his ear, or anyone’s ear for as long as mankind has existed. If only he knew how rare that song was.  
  
“Nobody ever believed me when I told them that’s not what you looked like.”  
  
“Well, now you can prove them all wrong, say, ‘hey everybody, look, here’s Levi Ackerman, see, I told you that’s not what he looked like!’”  
  
There it is again, that golden laugh, the sound brighter and warmer than the sun, the one he wants to hear every day for the rest of his life.  
  
“My name isn’t Levi this time.”  
  
“Mine’s not Eren, either.”  
  
“I do hope you understand that I’m not going to be calling you anything else.”  
  
“Please don’t. I’ve always dreamed that I’d hear you say my name again.”  
  
Humanity’s Strongest and Humanity’s Last Hope remained in front of that statue until the sun began to set, their affectionate words strange and incomprehensible to the ears of all who passed by them.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't decide between Corporal or Captain. Hmm.


	3. Let's go back home now, it's getting dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so very much for reading and leaving feedback.

  
  
_“Levi, I’m sorry. It couldn’t wait.”_  
  
_“You… you asshole. Fuck you, Erwin!”_  
  
_“You understand why it had to be done. I’m sorry that this is all I have to give you.”_

  
  
_—_

  
  
Night began to fall around the two souls reunited. Hand-in-hand they walked through the city, uncaring of who might see their open display of affection. It’s a relief to Levi, something new, as there was now no reason to hide their relationship. There are no more rumors, no more accusations, no more military code by which soldiers were bound to abide. No longer would a Captain’s lover become a target to those preying on his weaknesses. This new world comes with risks and taboos of its own, but to the former soldiers, they mean nothing.  
  
“You must be dying for a shower.” Eren is smiling as he says this, fondly recalling his Captain’s reputation in the Survey Corps. Clean was never clean enough for Captain Levi, and he learned quickly how high the Captain’s standards really were.  He remembers how proud he was when the Captain said that he was the only one capable of cleaning to his satisfaction.  
  
“You have no idea.”  
  
“Let’s go get you cleaned up.”  
  
Levi has never been to this city before. He’s travelled many miles following some unknown longing, never knowing nor finding what it is that he seeks. This new city is unfamiliar to his eyes, though an unknown force draws him along familiar paths, and when he closes his eyes he sees ancient Shiganshina in ruins. So Eren leads him, and he follows.  
  
“Oh, we should stop in here!” Eren stops on the sidewalk, looking into the wide panes of glass that spill warm light onto the quickly darkening street. He leads Levi by the hand into the shop, only letting go to pick up a basket from a stack beside the door.  
  
“Grab whatever you want. I’m paying. Don’t give me that look. I know you want this.” Eren holds up a bottle of shampoo and Levi concedes. Yes, he wants this. Into the basket it goes.  
  
The shopping basket grows heavier with every aisle they browse. Levi compares several different brands of soap, deciding on one and placing it into the basket. When he’s not looking, Eren picks up the ones that Levi placed back on the shelf and quietly adds them to the basket.  
  
Levi is standing in the middle of another aisle, looking pensively at the razors and shaving creams in front of him. He’s never been able to grow facial hair, he laments to himself, wondering if Eren had ever wished him to look more masculine. He looks up, still thinking, only to see Eren frozen in front of a shelf at the end. Levi quickly dismisses the thought of shaving, casually returning to Eren’s side to see what he’s looking at so intently.  
  
And when he is beside Eren again, he sees, frozen still by the sight just as his lover is.  
  
Eren swallows audibly, not looking over when he senses Levi’s presence, instead speaking to him with his eyes still locked on the items in front of him.  
  
“It’s too bad we didn’t have any of this stuff back then.” Slowly, shyly, he finally turns to meet Levi’s eyes.  
  
Levi feels a shiver run through his body when he takes in Eren’s timid expression, the deep pink beginning to stain his cheeks, and is confused by the butterflies that have suddenly taken up residence in his stomach. He reaches out to take hold of the handle of the basket that Eren is clutching just a little too tightly, prying it from his grip and setting it on the floor beside him. His hand replaces the basket’s handle and the butterflies once again remind him of their presence with their gentle fluttering when he notices the dampness of the larger palm pressed against his. He squeezes it then lets it go, reaching out now to pick up one of the bottles from the shelf.  
  
He turns it over in his hand, examining it, reading it. No, they definitely did not have this back then. Or that. Or those.  
  
“Eren.”  
  
Eren turns his face to Levi’s again, blush still creeping over his tanned cheeks. He’s quiet when he speaks, uncertainty softening his words.  
  
“I’ve… never bought this kind of thing before.”  
  
“Neither have I.”  Levi hesitates before asking.  “Do… you want to? We don’t have to do—“  
  
“Yeah.”  As nervous as Eren seems, his answer comes without any hesitation.  
  
“I don’t know what to get. There’s too many.”  
  
“Umm… How about that one?” Eren points to a rather plain and nondescript clear bottle and Levi retrieves it, once again examining it.  
  
“What about those?” Levi nods in the direction of a row of boxes, not looking up from the bottle in his hand, still reading over the label on the back.  
  
Eren appears to be considering it for a moment, shaking his head when he reaches his conclusion.  
  
“I mean, unless you’d rather use—“  
  
Levi interrupts Eren’s answer when he leans up to whisper something in his ear that causes the pink of his cheeks to run all the way down to his neck.  
  
He takes Eren by the hand once more, leaning over to pick up the basket with the opposite hand, a bottle of personal lubricant now joining the several different types of soap that weren’t in there the last time he looked.

 

—

 

It’s dark when they exit the shop, streetlights flickering on in a long row of glowing orbs, standing up straight and even along the road like soldiers. It’s not merely their stiff posture and perfectly spaced formation that reminds Levi of the soldiers he once commanded, no. It’s the knowledge that some day those lights will burn out, some sooner than others, only to be silently replaced with another, unnoticed and endlessly until the day that there’s no darkness left to fight.  
  
Their walk is peaceful and scenic. The town is considered to be a historic location and thus is carefully maintained for the enjoyment of tourists and residents alike. Flowers and trees line every street, every building in perfect condition, no sign at all of peeling paint or crumbling mortar. Levi breaks the comfortable silence, curious now about Eren’s life.  
  
“Where do you live?”  
  
“I live on the east side of town, not too far from where I lived back then, actually.”  
  
“Then we’re going the wrong way.”  
  
“That’s because I’m not going home.” Eren doesn’t look at Levi when he says this, but Levi still catches the sly, cocky upturn of Eren’s lips when he does.  
  
“No way I’m spending my first night with you in two-thousand years with my mother right across the hall.”

 

—

 

The hotel room seems nice. Too nice. Levi has never stayed in a hotel, but judging by the similarity of inns and brothels of his previous life, this must be incredibly expensive. He wonders how Eren, a student, could be able to afford such a luxury, but puts that thought aside for later when Eren takes his backpack from him and tosses it aside to push him toward the bed, forcing him to sit on the edge. Eren cages him there with his arms, his tall frame hovering over him when he leans in for a kiss.  
  
The kiss is brief, though, as Eren soon turns away to look for something on the table near the bed.  
  
“Here,” Eren says, extending the thin book from the table out for him to take. “I know you’re probably hungry. Why don’t you pick something off of the room service menu? That way we can have a nice dinner alone without having to go out again.”  
  
Levi takes the menu, flipping open the cover to browse the list of fancy-sounding dishes, printed in an equally fancy-looking script.  
  
“Pick whatever you want. I… need a few minutes.”  Levi nods, still reading the extensive menu in his lap, looking up from his task only when he hears Eren close the bathroom door behind him.  
  
_Oh_ , Levi thinks. _OH_.  
  
He abandons the thought of dinner when the reality of what they’re going to do finally sinks in.

 

—

 

When Eren returns, Levi is still sitting on the edge of the bed, lost in memories of the past.  
  
“Did you pick something? I can order it now and you’ll have plenty of time to shower before it gets here.”  Levi is staring, unreadable, and Eren senses that something is off.    
  
“I’m not hungry for dinner.”  
  
“Are you feeling okay?” Eren moves in close to put his hand to Levi’s forehead, checking for signs of fever.  
  
“Quite.”  
  
“You’re really not hungry?”  
  
“I didn’t say I wasn’t hungry.”  
  
Eren starts to question him but doesn’t get the chance; Levi grabs him by the collar and pulls him down to devour him instead.  
  
“But, that will have to wait. As starved as I am for you, I need that shower. Trust me.” Eren laughs and Levi finally rises, making his way to the bathroom, unable to resist the lure of hot water and soap.  
  
“Always have.”  
  
Levi stands in the bathroom doorway, now donning that look of annoyance that brings back so many memories for Eren. He sees the Captain of the Survey Corps standing there crossing his arms impatiently, and for an instant he thinks he sees the grey stone arches of the castle in Karanese District and begins to anticipate a scolding about his cleaning.  
  
“Are you coming or not?”  
  
“Is that an order, sir?”  
  
Levi rolls his eyes, turning his back to Eren and disappearing into the spacious bathroom, Eren following close behind with a spring in his step, just like in those long-gone days of puppy love where he’d follow his Captain anywhere.

 

—

 

The running water in the regal, marble-tiled shower is forgotten. Steam begins to billow around them and the mirrors no longer reflect the image of the two figures facing each other, their shapes blurred by hazy fog.  
  
They stare at each other, once again hesitant, hands twitching, neither brave enough to make the first move. It is not something new to either of them, but somehow… Somehow this time it’s different. Not everything is different, though. Eren is still brave and willful and his hands are the ones that shakily rise to make the first move. He stops, hands hovering near the zipper at Levi’s neck, eyes searching the shorter man’s, questioning. He looks into those grey eyes that he knows are actually a deep, stormy blue up close, and what he finds there is a plea.  
  
And so his trembling fingers reach out, delicately taking the metal slider between them. Slowly, slowly, ever-so-slowly, he lowers it. The worn hooded sweatshirt slides down Levi’s arms, catching at his wrists before being shucked to the floor and revealing the black button-down shirt hidden underneath. Eren draws a sharp breath, fingers still trembling when they seek out the first shiny button. And slowly, carefully, just like before, he works. Button after button he descends, Levi standing still in submission, eyes soft and never leaving his own. Inch after inch of skin is exposed until the very last button is conquered and the shirt hangs loosely open over Levi’s chest. The black fabric exaggerates the paleness of Levi’s skin and Eren aches with the need to touch it; to touch it again, to touch it for the first time.  
  
Levi shares this need, wrapping his fingers around Eren’s wrists to raise his hands, to bring his palms to rest flat upon his bare chest. His heart pounds, Eren’s heart pounds, and something sparks between them. Relief, remembrance.  Eren’s warm hands travel upwards, sliding over defined shoulders, slipping the shirt down, down, off the arms, onto the floor.  
  
It is Levi’s turn now, and he mirrors Eren’s actions. Gazing, seeking, needing. The hem of Eren’s shirt rises, Levi cursing his height when Eren has to pull it up over his head. It joins Levi’s clothes on the bathroom floor and then Levi’s hands, Levi’s eyes are on him. Levi marvels over the broad chest under his fingertips, tracing the dips of muscle, feeling the raised white lines that interrupt the smoothness of Eren’s skin. He doesn’t remember those. Are these…? He looks up to Eren, confused.  
  
“Scars?”  Eren nods.  
  
“That’s new. Are you not a titan this time?” Eren shakes his head. No, he isn’t, and he’s never been able to decide if he’s thankful for that or not.  
  
“Mm.” Levi takes note but does not linger on the topic.  
  
What he does linger on is the waistband of Eren’s jeans, thumb toying with the button, fingers brushing over the bare skin of Eren’s abdomen, knuckles tracing the dark line of hair beneath his navel.  
  
“Can I?” Eren swallows nervously before he nods, granting Levi permission to continue.  
  
This time Levi’s eyes are focused downwards, following the actions of his nimble fingers. First the button, and then the zipper, parting the fly at an agonizingly slow pace, taking his time to memorize this moment. His hands find Eren’s hips and he hooks his thumbs over the waistband of the unfastened pants resting loosely there. He wastes no time with this step, though. He pushes his hands down, boldly dragging down both pants and undergarments at the same time. His hands are atop the fabric, dipping into the back pockets, but they still teasingly squeeze when they slide over the swell of Eren’s ass. He stops at Eren’s thighs, and Eren chooses to kick them off the rest of the way when Levi steps back.  
  
Levi drinks in the sight of Eren bare before him. He’d seen this body countless times, not only when they lived before, but in his dreams in this new life. Even then, it still somehow felt like he was seeing Eren for the very first time. His memories were so detailed that sometimes he wasn’t sure which world was really the dream, but perhaps they weren’t as accurate as he thought. This is better than he remembered. How, he doesn’t know, it just… is. And he’s shameless as he looks Eren up and down, he’s been through far too much and waited far too long to bother with shame anymore. He’s so consumed with what’s in front of him that he doesn’t perceive himself thinking aloud.  
  
“That’s new too.”  
  
“Ah, yeah…” Eren’s body stiffens slightly when Levi says this, looking off to the side, avoiding eye contact in an effort to hide his embarrassment. He unconsciously rubs his arm, shrinking in on himself defensively.  
  
Levi’s eyes dart upward in shock, slapped with the sudden realization that he’d said that out loud.  
  
“My parents were kind of religious, so… I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.”  
  
“Eren… Are you embarrassed?” Levi is admittedly a little surprised, but that’s it. This Eren is still his Eren, in his eyes perfect in every way.  
  
Eren’s lack of response is confirmation enough. Doesn’t he already know? He’ll have to remind him again.  
  
Levi grabs Eren by the waist, pulling their bodies together with enough force to knock them off balance. Levi once more stands on his toes to whisper into Eren’s ear, ignoring his own self-consciousness that is not something new this time around.  
  
“Don’t you dare be ashamed of anything around me. Do you not realize that you’re perfect?” Levi feels Eren shiver at his words and remembers.  
  
“My treasure, you are the most exquisite thing I have ever laid eyes on. To me, you are a god among men. Your beauty is unequivocal.” As he continues, Levi notices the way Eren’s heart beats faster in his chest, feels the pulse thumping in his veins. He loves this secret of Eren’s and is more than happy to indulge it. He mulls over his options now, plotting his next move, wondering if he should continue teasing or deliver the coup de grâce. He decides on the latter.  
  
He abruptly shoves one arm down between them, cupping Eren in his hand, wrapping the other around the back of Eren’s neck to pull him even closer so that he can growl into his ear,  
  
“And you have the most _remarkably_ gorgeous cock.” He punctuates the last word with a squeeze to reinforce his assertion.  
  
While Eren is standing there stunned, Levi uses the opportunity to push him by the chest into the huge shower that has now filled the entire bathroom with dense, humid steam. Eren stumbles backward until his back touches the wall and he braces himself against it, still staring dumbfounded at Levi who makes sure Eren is watching as he strips off his own pants, tossing them aside carelessly, and then stalks toward Eren, sliding the glass shower door shut behind him.

 

—

 

Levi lies on the enormous hotel bed, still drunk off the pleasure of the greatest shower of any of his lives. He’s facing Eren, who is also on his side, head propped up on one arm, mirror images of each other. Their free hands are clasped between them, and Levi gazes lovingly into Eren’s eyes, reliving the moment they just shared.  
  
Eren truly knows the way to Levi’s heart. As soon as Eren recovered from the shock of being pushed into the running water, his hands were instantly on Levi. His gentle fingers were running through his wet, filthy hair, massaging fragrant lather through long black locks that haven’t been cut in who knows how long. Levi could have melted at Eren’s careful touch, but it just kept getting better and better. He scrubbed over and over until his hair was completely clean, and then he continued to spoil Levi even further. He stroked loving hands over every inch of Levi’s skin, caressing and scrubbing until the filth was lifted from him and the water ran clear. It was so warm, so soothing, everything smelled so good, and Eren took his time caring for him until he was so relaxed that he feared his knees might give out.  
  
And now they are here in bed, standing at the precipice, neither moving to jump first lest they not fall together.  
  
“Levi… Back then…” Eren looks away and Levi listens with concern.  
  
“The first time… I don’t want it to be like that again.” Levi sees Eren frown in the darkness of the room, brows pinched as he speaks. A few moments pass before he finally looks back up to meet Levi’s eyes.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Levi says with all sincerity. “I don’t want it to either. I wish it didn’t happen that way.”  
  
He lifts their clasped hands up to his face, kissing the back of Eren’s hand as he remembers. Things were different back then. Things are different now. And things _will_ be different.

Levi’s voice is deep and gentle when he makes his promise.

“Oh, my little beast. I am going to give you the first time you deserved.”

 

 

 


	4. I feel like I had a long dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major character death in this chapter.

  
  
_“Happy birthday, brat. I got you something. It’s not much, but these are your favorite, right? Here. I thought you might like them. I can’t believe it’s been a year already. I… love you, Eren. I love you so much. I hope you know that. I have to go now, but I’ll see you soon.”_

 

—

 

There they lie on the bed in the comfort and privacy of the cool, dark hotel room.  They’re unhurried now, a vast difference between this life and the last. This world, the same world, is not safe by any means, but to them it’s practically a dream. A dream they’ve always had of laying down in a warm, soft bed, side by side, no titans shaking the ground outside, no soldiers screaming in their sleep in the barracks. It’s peaceful here in the phantom Shiganshina. Once an exterior city, literally a honey pot for titans with people living as bait, Shiganshina, or what used to be Shiganshina, is now an interior city, safer now than even the capitol in the center of Wall Sina.  
  
No, they do not hurry this time. They have all the time in the world now, or so they prefer to believe. They silently gaze into each other’s eyes, Levi slowly stroking Eren’s cheek as they face each other in the soft moonlight seeping in through the hotel window, feeling the warmth of their skin together for the first time in this life.  
  
“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you.”  
  
Eren doesn’t answer. Levi sees him frown slightly, averting his eyes, and Levi sighs. He understands because he’s thinking about it too, and how he's damn sure that this first won't be like the last. He will make up for it ten times over.

 

—

 

“Eren. I need you to know that I might not come back from this. I want you to be strong.”  
  
“Levi, don’t go! Take me with you! Please, Levi!”  
  
Levi’s heart aches. The unshed, angry tears gathering in eyes of his pleading lover are like a slowly twisting knife, but he dares not look away. He is memorizing them, etching every element of his beautiful Eren into his mind in great detail, painting his image onto the backs of his eyelids to recall in his last moments if that’s what lies ahead. He doesn’t show this on his face, but he fears his eyes cannot lie.  
  
“You know I can’t do that.”  
  
He finishes buckling his harness, checking himself over to make sure every connection is secure before approaching Eren. He reaches up and wraps his palm around Eren’s neck, pulling him down far enough for him to press his lips to Eren’s forehead. He remains this way for a long while, inhaling Eren’s scent, memorizing it as well. Eren is trembling, he can feel it. He’s just as afraid as he is but is not as practiced at hiding it.  
  
“I need to go. Erwin is waiting.”  
  
“You can’t!”  
  
Levi closes his eyes in frustration. Eren is making this so much harder for him, as if it wasn’t hard enough already. This is the most dangerous mission so far, but he must do his duty and it’s crucial that Eren stay behind, safe and secure in this stronghold surrounded by elite soldiers.  
  
“Eren…”  
  
“Make me yours.”  
  
“You’re already mine.”  
  
“No. This might… This might be the last time…” Eren pauses, frowning, trying to fortify himself and failing, not able to summon the courage to complete the thought, though Levi doesn’t need him to. He draws a long breath and continues.  
  
“I want you to claim me as yours. Please, Levi, I don’t care how little time we have,” Eren’s voice is steadier now, serious as he demands, “If you're going to go, take me before you leave.”  
  
Levi feels his blood run cold. His instinct is to refuse, knowing that this is not how either of them wanted their first coupling to occur. Rushed, desperate, fearful. He resists the idea longer, but knows that the future is uncertain for him. He may very well die on the battlefield today. Would it make it easier for Eren to move on if his last memory of him was of rejection? His stomach churns at the thought. It may truly be the last chance and that is undeniable. Eren is pleading with him and though he’d hoped it would happen differently, he has the same fear. They are unprepared and have mere minutes before the Commander comes to retrieve the Captain who is already late. He can’t waste any more time on this decision.  
  
He gives in.  
  
He lies with Eren and leaves.

 

—

 

It is not a pleasant memory for them. They have both carried that memory into this life and at times it is unavoidable, replaying in their minds despite their best efforts to banish it.  
  
“We don’t have to do anything. I’m content just to be here with you,” Levi says truthfully, now stroking Eren’s hair. “I never want to be without you again.”  
  
The words that Levi said to him are ringing in his ears. _I never want to be without you again._ He shares the sentiment, yet they still strike Eren as significant somehow.  
  
“I don’t want to be without you either. I’ve seen you in my dreams for as long as I can remember and I _missed_ you. I wasn't even sure... I thought they were just dreams for the longest time, except they were too vivid, too… real. But…”  
  
“But?”  
  
Eren dwells on it for a time, looking away and lost in thought. His body tenses and he realizes: He doesn’t remember being without him in his dreams. In this life, surely, but not then. _He doesn’t remember his death._  
  
“… When you said you didn’t want to be without me again… You weren’t talking about now, were you.”  
  
Levi quickly averts his eyes and Eren feels his throat tighten.  
  
“Levi…?” There’s hesitation in Eren’s voice, but he knows he’s spoken before he’d had a chance to really think about what he was about to ask.  
  
“Hm.” Levi offers only a grunt in response, still not looking up.

"Did I die before you?"

Now it's Levi's body becoming tense, and Eren's heart drops into his stomach when he feels it. The way Levi's breathing stops abruptly before being released as a pained and anxious sigh is answer enough for him.  
  
“How did I die?”  
  
Levi sucks in a long, shaking breath, removing his hand from Eren’s hair. He turns over onto his back, beckoning Eren to him with an outstretched arm. Eren’s head finds its way onto Levi’s shoulder, Levi’s arms wrapped protectively around him, his own arm draped over Levi’s middle.

He does not want to think of this now, but Eren deserves to know.

Levi begins to speak, staring off at some point across the room as he recounts the details of Eren’s death. Eren listens intently, hand absently stroking over Levi’s abdomen, fingers occasionally toying with the thatch of hair beneath his navel.  
  
“You were murdered. I was there when it happened.”

 

—

 

They had been ambushed on the way back to the wall, a dozen or more titans seemingly appearing from thin air as they approached the end of the treeline.  
  
The squad split off to avoid being overwhelmed, each soldier luring their own titan away from Eren to a safer area where they could maneuver through the trees to attack.  
  
Levi watched Eren and a new recruit fly past him to take on an abnormal as he fired his hooks into the closer 20-meter class. He swung up to its shoulder with ease, rapidly slicing away a section of nape large enough to down the titan. It was only a few minutes since he’d seen Eren pass and he immediately headed in his direction to make sure he and the recruit could take out the abnormal. He spotted them soon after, Eren about to land his strike on the abnormal titan, recruit in the air right behind him.  
  
Everything moved in slow motion.  
  
He saw the recruit raise his blade as if to make the killing blow to the titan’s neck. Except… Eren is right in front of it. He saw the recruit align his strike. His blood turned to ice when the recruit made no move to avoid Eren, blades already mid-swing.  
  
He wouldn’t make it in time. He didn’t make it in time.  
  
The blade honed in on its targets with expert precision, a skill too perfect to belong to a new recruit. Levi watched in horror as Eren’s body slumped and fell ungracefully to the forest floor, his head cleanly severed at the neck. The titan’s blood joined Eren’s on the blade when the recruit altered his trajectory, making his second kill by slashing through the titan’s nape.  
  
Levi saw red.  
  
In an instant he was upon the recruit, mercilessly knocking him from the air and onto the ground. He spoke not a single word while he looked the traitor in the eyes, nor when running him through with his own blade. He made certain to make it as painful as possible, sticking him through the small intestine so that he could bleed out in agony.  Levi made sure to keep eye contact when he slowly twisted his blade in the gasping man's guts. He wanted him to know that he was undeserving of the same quick, clean, painless death of decapitation that Eren...  
  
_Eren_.  
  
His rage subsided at once, the agonized screams of the traitor on the ground completely ignored as he rushed to Eren’s body.  
  
Levi was numb as he dropped to his knees beside Eren. His body lay still and unmoving, any hope he held that Eren’s titan power would heal him completely shattered. No steam rose from the wound. No pulse.  
  
No head.  
  
He looked around in a panic, heart pounding, with weightless limbs and a terrible prickling sensation that engulfed every part of him. He saw the mop of brown hair beneath a nearby bush and scrambled on hands and knees through the blood-soaked dirt to retrieve it from the forest floor.  
  
His eyes were open.

 

—

 

The squad came charging through the trees at incredible speed, only slowing down when they sighted the Captain on the ground, bloody and with his back to them.  
  
“Captain!!”  
  
The thundering vibration of titan footfalls grew louder and louder, beginning to drown out the shouts attempting to draw the Captain’s attention.  
  
There Levi knelt on the filth of the forest floor, his white uniform soiled with dirt and gore, nearly as still as the body of his lover cradled in his arms. The Captain was dead to the world, completely in shock. He held the body up against his shoulder, arms supporting Eren’s back, limbs spread across his lap, severed head held tightly in both hands in front of him where his arms wrapped around and joined in a cruel mockery of an embrace. His mouth hung open, eyes wide, unfocused, unblinking, and staring down at the head he held in his bloody hands.  
  
They all saw the body in their Captain’s arms and they all saw that whoever it was was clearly dead.  
  
“Captain! Leave it! It’s too late!”  
  
The shouts of his squad grew more frantic as the titans approached from the rear.  
  
“Captain, we have to move! You have to get up!”  
  
No response.  
  
“Behind you!!”  
  
The hissing of wires and gas joined the sounds of chaos around the Captain as two soldiers moved to stop the titan that had closed in on them with frightening speed.  
  
The Captain began to process what he had just heard, and when he had, his response chilled his squad to the bone.  
  
“ _What did you just say._ ” It didn’t sound like a question the way Levi had said it. It was a threat, almost a whisper, eerily calm but full of venom.  
  
“Cap-… Captain… Captain, we have to go or it’ll be all of us!” The panting soldier was growing frantic, looking around in panic, not really noticing the second body on the ground nearby.  
  
Levi did not make eye contact with the shouting soldier, nor did he ease his grip on the body in his lap.  
  
“Get up! Two more are heading this way!” The terror was clear on this soldier’s face as he urged the Captain to move and abandon the body. “You can’t… It’ll slow you down!”  
  
“ _WHAT. DID YOU. JUST SAY._ ” Levi’s voice was now deadly, terrifying the remaining soldiers even more.  
  
“I said you have to leave it! We have to get out of here!”  
  
“ _He_ is not an _it_. _Eren_ is not an _it_!”  
  
Levi’s rage swelled again, almost tangibly, hanging in the air like suffocating smoke. The soldiers fell silent in fear of both the titans _and_ the Captain. The spell was broken when a voice spoke up beside them.  
  
There was Erwin on his massive white horse. He had come to a stop to assess the situation. It was grim. It would need to be dealt with later. For now they had to run.  
  
“It’s Eren.” The utterance was rough with a brokenness never before heard from the strong and stoic Captain.  
  
Yet Erwin knew without having to be told. No other soldier's death would bring Humanity's Strongest to his knees.  
  
It was a risk to remove Levi in this manner, but staying any longer would spell certain death for all of them.  
  
The remaining soldiers made their escape with the Commander riding double with the Captain, who had begun to sob, forehead dropped onto Erwin’s back, Eren’s lifeless body pressed between them.

 

—

 

Tears were silently streaming down Eren’s face and pooling on Levi’s bare chest, but Levi was determined to hold back. He’d seen this nightmare so many times. It never got any easier and it never hurt any less. The only thing that had changed was his ability to hide it.  
  
Eren remained silent, listening intently as Levi continued his story.  
  
“Once Erwin saw that it was you, he knew that we had to take your body with us.”

 

—

 

Levi shot up from his seat, violently slamming his palms down on Erwin’s desk when Erwin spoke.  
  
“Levi, I’m sorry. It couldn’t wait.”  
  
“You… You _asshole_. Fuck you, Erwin!” Levi’s voice cracked as he shouted curses at the Commander. He abandoned his aggressive posture leaning over Erwin’s desk to stand up straight and pull at his own hair.  
  
“You understand why it had to be done. I’m sorry that this is all I have to give you.”  
  
Erwin truly was sorry. He deeply mourned Eren’s death, and he mourned for his trusted second-in-command. He’d never seen Levi so undone, so distraught, not even on the fateful day he’d joined the Corps. He felt guilt over this, but he did what he had to do.  
  
Erwin slid something across his desk toward Levi. It was a small yet beautiful crystal flask capped in gold and inside it was something grey. Levi stared at it.  
  
The recruit that killed Eren was quickly identified when they returned to the walls. Once the were aware that there was a spy in their ranks, they knew exactly where to go for information. The methods used to obtain that information may have involved some greased palms and some enhanced interrogation, but it needed to happen immediately and there was no other way.

The recruit in question turned out to be an infiltrator from a secret faction of the Military Police. His objective was to obtain Eren, dead or alive, and bring him to a hidden location for experimentation. The fact that Levi had already executed the assassin was _accidentally_ left out of the official reports.  
  
Everyone had seen the Survey Corps return with a single dead body wrapped in a cloak and _without_ Eren riding alongside them through the gate. It was obvious to anyone watching and they could not let Eren fall into enemy hands. Without a doubt they'd have people asking questions. If an assassin could join the Survey Corps without ever raising suspicion, who is to say that there isn't another waiting to snatch Eren's body? There was no time.

Levi had wanted to give Eren a proper burial. Erwin had called him to his office to discuss this and that’s when he learned that he would not be granted this request.  
  
Erwin had Eren’s body burned immediately after returning.  
  
The delicate crystal flask was Erwin’s apology. It was a small apology, and it was done secretly, but it was important for him to do this for Levi.  
  
Inside the vial were the ashes of Eren Jäger.

 

 

 


	5. Do you resent me?

 

_“Commander??”_

_"Stop where you are. Go get Hanji.”_

_“Sir?”_

_"Now.”_

_“Yes, sir!”_

——

 

The only thing breaking the silence in the dark stillness of their rented room are the sounds of Captain and soldier reborn as they experience each other for the first time, yet in a new way, a way that their memories have never shown them.

Levi cries.

Eren comforts.

They both had their fill of grief back then. Though every death cut them less and less as the bodies of their comrades piled up, never did it stop hurting entirely. But, they were soldiers. They had little time to grieve. They could not let their emotions overtake them lest they become distracted by them and end up as the next corpse on the pile. They had to move forward. They had to fight. They had to stay strong even when it was a lie.

Now there is no fight for them. No soldiers to command, no battles to be won. Humanity’s Last Hope is just a page in the history books; Humanity’s Strongest Soldier merely a memory carved from stone.

And so they feel.

Eren had always offered comfort to his Captain, but never like this. He had never seen him cry. At times he secretly wished that the Captain _would_ cry, if only for a moment. He saw the weight of the sorrows the Captain carried; they were written plainly on his face, reflected in his tired eyes, and, in the dead of night, whimpered out unknowingly in his sleep.

And now, without the weight of the world upon him, the Captain allows himself to feel, to grieve. He doesn’t have to be strong anymore. He is nothing in this new world and there is more than a lifetime’s worth of pain that bleeds from a wound that never healed.

Eren is scared and he’s always been brave. But this? It is frightening and new, though it is nothing compared to the fear of daily facing your own death, and not only that, but the deaths of everyone you’ve ever known, understanding your own helplessness in the face of an invincible enemy. The fear subsides. He knows exactly what to do and he knows he’s still humanity’s hope, even if it’s hope for one man alone.

So, in the dead of night, he holds his Captain as he bleeds.

 

——

 

The tears have subsided for now and the memories begin their retreat back to where they belong. The images in his mind fade as Levi returns to the present and he takes comfort in the peace of their surroundings. He takes comfort in Eren, alive and whole and wrapped around him more tightly than he can ever remember. Then again, he can never remember being so vulnerable, but Eren is there, lending his own strength, protecting him from whatever may seek to exploit his weakness, whatever may be there in the shadows waiting to bring him harm. 

Eren notices how Levi’s breathing has settled back into an easy pattern, how his heart no longer races and beats loud enough to hear in the quiet space where they hide. His steady hands stroke his Captain’s long black hair, and he presses a lingering kiss to his temple.

Levi reluctantly unwinds the arms from around him and sits up against the headboard of the bed, looking around at the modern furnishings of the hotel room, regaining his bearings and his wits. Eren scoots up next to him, giving him some space but still remaining firmly by his side.

“Hey,” Eren drops his head to Levi’s shoulder, looking up toward his face in the darkness of the room. “You haven’t eaten yet. I’ll go get you something.” 

Eren moves a little closer now, turning to nuzzle his faceinto Levi’s neck.  He spends a few extra seconds to draw in the scent of Levi’s warm skin before he gets up. It’s strange, he thinks, how familiar it is to him even though he’s never smelled it before today. 

“No,” Levi wraps his arms around Eren’s bare torso, just as Eren had done to him. And now he’s the one pressing lips to soft hair that muffles his words. “I’m not hungry.”

“When was the last time you ate? I’m not going to let you—“

“Eren.”

Levi’s hand comes to rest on the side of Eren’s head, a subtle indication that Levi wishes him to be silent. He buries his fingers in that ever-wild brown hair and presses Eren’s face even closer to his neck, unwilling to allow the warmth of him leave his skin.

“Stay here.”

Eren relaxes. He understands what Levi needs. The body’s hunger can wait. 

No more is said. 

The room is silent once more as the pair cocoon themselves in clean sheets, bound in a tangled embrace as merciful sleep subdues them.

 

——

 

Levi wakes up alone.

He jolts, eyes snapping open when he fails to feel Eren’s warm body beside him.

His fears are allayed; immediately after opening his eyes, he hears Eren hissing a curse under his breath as something nearby crashes to the floor. 

He’s not sure what to think of what he’s seeing. There before him is Eren, clad only in his underwear, balancing a plate in one hand while the fingers of the other hand dart to his mouth, where he then sucks on two of them. Eren goes as still and stiff as a spooked rabbit when he realizes how much noise he’s made, and with wide eyes he looks over to where he left Levi sleeping in the hotel bed. He appears even more startled when his eyes meet Levi’s, which are now very much open and awake.

This exchange spans no more than several seconds, and it ends with a shocked Eren nearly dropping the plate in his hand.

Because Levi… is laughing.

And so Eren laughs, running his hand through his hair that sleep and soap have made even wilder, and Levi forgets everything except this moment.

As Eren makes his way back to the bed, plate in hand, Levi laughs again at Eren’s mirthful grin and his ridiculous hair that’s standing up at all angles, and _especially_ at the way he almost trips over the metal cover that he dropped earlier.

“What? What’s so funny?” Eren asks, sitting on top of the bedsheets next to Levi, placing the plate of food between them. “It was hot!”

And Levi can do nothing more than smile as Eren hands him a fork before immediately stabbing his own into the steaming omelet, shoving a forkful into his mouth as if he was the one who hadn’t eaten in days.

“Ish gon get cowd,” he says with a mouthful of egg, motioning to the plate with his empty fork in a similar stabbing motion, imploring Levi to eat.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, brat.” But Levi is still smiling as he says this, and in return, Eren does as well, lips pulled into a grin around a too-big mouthful of egg.

Eren swallowsbefore he’s even finished chewing his food, sitting up straight and exclaiming, “Shit! I forgot the tea!”

Levi laughs again when Eren scrambles out of bed and barely avoids knocking the plate onto the floor with his foot. This… is new. He would have never imagined having a leisurely, stress-free breakfast in bed with Eren back when fighting for survival was their only focus.

And Levi thinks to himself,

_Not bad._

 

——

 

How Levi hadn’t woken up when Eren got up before him, stumbling around the room in the early hours of the morning in his usual clumsy way, he will never know. He must have been more exhausted than he realized to be able to sleep through Eren getting out of bed, showering, ordering food, and even unlocking and opening the door to the room, only waking up just as Eren dropped the hot metal warming cover to the floor with a clatter when he tried to remove it from the plate.

But the bed was so soft, and his body was so sore, and Eren’s warm skin was so pleasant against his own, it’s not like he wanted to wake up in the first place. And he would not have minded never waking up, he thinks to himself, if not for the thought of Eren there beside him.  Surely it would have been a much more pleasant death than his first, but that is not something he wishes to recall.

He shakes off this thought as the hot water runs through his hair and down his body, and he can’t even remember the last time he was this clean, or, more significantly, this… _happy_.

Eren had graciously given him some time alone, having already showered himself, saying that he had a few things to take care of and that he’d be back in an hour. Levi uses this time to reflect. Can any of this be real? Everything about the past twenty-four hours has been so incredibly _un_ -real. Stumbling into a strange city without evenknowing why he wanted to go there in the first place. Seeing Eren sitting on that bench. It was only from behind, but somehow he _knew_. The words that came spilling from his mouth unbidden, in a language he had forgotten he spoke. Eren’s reply, the same as it always was. The statue of him standing alone on the battlefield. The school. And Eren. The new Eren, the same as he always was. 

But what of himself? Is he really the Levi that Eren knew? On that day he was dirty, apathetic, emotional, _vulnerable_. He was no soldier, no Captain, and a far cry from the title of Humanity’s Strongest. Yet Eren said nothing. Eren loved him all the same. And somehow this time it’s _Eren’s_ body that is bruised and scarred, and it’s _Eren_ protecting _him_ , comforting _him_ in the wake of the deluge of emotion that spilledfrom the wreckage of the dam that held fast for so long. And still, Eren said nothing. Made no comment about this weak side of him that he’d never dared reveal. And he is thankful, for his pride was already weakened enough; it could not sustain another blow.

He wonders how Eren can still think so highly of him now. Does Eren resent him for subjecting him to that? For forcing him to witness his weakness, for forcing him to be the one to protect _him_ despite his obvious discomfort? If not now, will he ever?

He stands drying himself with soft, clean, white towels, trying not to catch sight of himself in the mirror, his long hair dripping water onto the tile floor.

He hears Eren’s voice and it breaks him from his rumination. He hears the click of the lock and the slide of the chain, furthering his disbelief of how he’d managed to sleep through the noise. 

Levi steps out into the bedroom, rubbing the towel through his hair, and he hears Eren gasp from where he’s standing in the doorway. He looks up to see Eren’s wide, green eyes upon him, snapping up to his face when he realizes he’s been staring. It’s then that he remembers that he’s nude, and Eren’s reaction elicits a smirk from him.

“Here, I got you these.”

Eren steps forward to present him with an armful of folded cloth. Levi obliges, receiving Eren’s offering. He unfolds the cloth and holds it out in front of him.

“I think these should fit you. I was going to wash your clothes, but they looked pretty destroyed… I… threw them away, I hope you don’t mind.” Eren looks shyly at the floor as if he’s expecting Levi to scold him for doing so without his permission.

“Eren,” Levi whispers, stepping forward to acknowledge him with a kiss. “Thank you.”

 

—--

 

“We only have the room until noon. We can stay here longer if you want, but I shouldlet my mom know where I am since I didn’t come home last night.”

“Your… mother.” Levi remembers Eren mentioning her the night before, but it was not exactly the most important thought on his mind at the time.

“Yeah.”

Levi never got to meet Eren’s mother, the woman having passed away before he’d met Eren, eaten by a titan in the fall of Shiganshina. And Levi remembers again the details he’d glossed over the previous day.

“Don’t you have school today?”

“Does it matter?”

“Are you asking me if I care if you skip school?”  _Does_ he care? Truly, no, but he supposes he should keep Eren’s best interests in mind. 

“Not really, I think you already know what I think.”

“Good. Then I don’t have to be responsible for your… delinquency.”

Eren’s face lights up at Levi's answer, but soon falls again.

“But… I think my mom would care. So… I’m guessing we should probably wait until school is over before we go home.”  Eren looks up in shock at his own words, mouth opening and closing, stuttering as he speaks. “I mean, uh, if you wanted to go home.. with me. To my house.”

 _Already taking me to meet the parents_ , Levi thinks to himself in amusement.

Levi laughs again, the sound bubbling up from his throat abundantly, profusely, _excessively_ ,even, as if he has some quota to fill, as if he's making up for lost time, and he doesn’t even know how many times he’s done that today, and he _definitely_ has no desire to quit. 

 

 

 

 


	6. A Grim Reminder

  _“Erwin, I’m…”_

_“Not now.”_

_“But…”_

_“Not now, Hanji.”_

_"Then, your orders?”_

_"No one is to know about this. No one. Understood?”_

  
  
——

 

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay another night?  I can tell my mom I’m sleeping over at your place,” Eren’s eyes widen as his words trail off and he looks up to Levi, but Levi shows no reaction. “And then we can just come back here.”

“No, that’s not necessary. I’m quite fine with sleeping in your bed tonight.”

“Really? Because it’s no problem, I’ll just go down and—“

“Eren. It’s fine.” Levi’s voice carries a hint of annoyance, a trait carried over from his days as Captain, but he knows he can’t complain and doesn’t plan to, either. Admittedly, he does favor the idea of another night spent alone with Eren, but he would enjoy any time spent with him, with or without the privacy of the hotel. Besides, he can’t help but keep a mental tally of how much Eren’s spent on him so far and he has no idea how he can afford it all.

“All right. The offer still stands, though. So… What would you like to do for the next few hours? We could go for a walk in the park, maybe feed the ducks, or maybe…”

“Eren, I honestly don’t care. We can do whatever you want.”

 _Levi Ackerman_ , he thinks, cold, emotionless Captain Levi Ackerman _feeding ducks in the park_. He envisions it while Eren is spitting ideas at him. Sitting on soft, green grass under a clear blue sky, just enough of a cool breeze to make the water ripple and sparkle in the sun. Eren’s green eyes lit up and smiling, the sound of him talking to the ducks floating on the surface of that clean, sparkling water, trying in vain to entice them to take bits of bread from his hand. The smell of sun and grass on his skin just like he remembers. Eren giving up on trying to get the ducks’ attention and flopping his lanky body down onto the grass next to him, looking over with that glorious golden smile on his face and laughing. And again he thinks to himself: _I wouldn’t mind that, actually_. He notices that Eren has stopped talking.

“We can go write our names on Wall Maria with our piss for all I care, so long as it’s with you.”

“Wow Levi,” Eren says, chuckling. “That’s pretty sappy.” In Levi’s own way, of course.

“Well, what can I say? You know me, Eren. Always a romantic.” This earns a full-on laugh from Eren and Levi doesn’t even mind the spit that lands on him as a result.

“OH! I know exactly where we can go! I haven’t been there before but I have been kinda curious about it.”

“Anything you want, my darling,” Levi replies in his familiar monotone.

“Oh come _on_ , Levi!” Eren continues to laugh at his unusually playful Captain, but they both know how much Eren secretly adores those little names, even if neither will admit to it out loud.

 

——

 

“A museum?” Levi’s slender eyebrow raises and it occurs to him that it’s the first time that he’s openly allowed uncertainty to manifest itself in his expression. In public, at least.

In return, Eren’s expression falls, the smile dropping from his mouth and his posture softening. Of course, Levi notices this. He recalls seeing this look on his former scout’s face many times before, and again he curses himself, just like he always has. In their time together as soldiers in the midst of a war-torn world, Eren learned. Eren learned that what Levi lacked in tact, he more than made up for in the sincerity of his actions. They both knew what truly mattered and they both accepted this. And as Levi recalls all the times his words stung and disappointed the one he loved above all, he realizes.

“Don’t you wanna go?”

He realizes that the past has changed the present.

“Idiot. Of course I want to go. I just didn’t expect you to decide to skip school to do something so… educational.” _To come here and learn_.

A missed opportunity, yet Eren still rewards him, undeserved as it may be.

Eren is laughing when they walk through the columned entryway at the top of the steps and Levi opens the door for him, _like a gentleman_ , he thinks, determined to not let this opportunity be wasted. The door closes behind him with a gust of late Spring air, and when he places his hand on the small of Eren’s back, a hint of a smile warms his face. Just a trace, or perhaps only the mere _suggestion_ of a smile, he isn’t sure. The war still rages on outside the walls, but his service has long since ended. Levi no longer has any desire to fight.

 _Especially_ not this.

 

——

 

The museum holds many treasures snatched from the hands of time. Very few things ever escape the clutches of war, careless, wanton, and greedy. Thus, these rare survivors of war and time truly are treasures in the highest sense; precious beyond wealth and irreplaceable. Even two millennia ago, pre-war relics were scarce, so the mere existence of the things that Eren and Levi see here is nigh-unbelievable.

There is also some modern among the ancient in the museum halls. Works of art, antique technologies, tales of notable figures accompanied by their ghosts frozen in stone, all things that were born and then perished while the two soldiers displaced in time were at rest. And those two soldiers pass each one in disinterest, instead travelling back, back, rewinding the years, rewinding their lives, drawn toward something, some intangible _something_ that somehow feels like home.

That _something_ is above their heads. That _something_ pulls their focus upward, and when green and grey are fixed upon that _something_ , those old soldiers fall as still and silent as death.

A banner flies proudly overhead proclaiming a false victory, one that might have been but was not.

The banner above them bears the same wings as the soldiers did when they died with them upon their backs.

 

——

 

Eren is the first to move from where the sight halted him in his tracks. His held breath rushes from his lungs and is replaced, and he swallows audibly, his mouth dry. The lump in his throat is as leaden and unmoving as the one in his stomach. He reaches a shaky hand out, seeking his Captain, and he is there, just as he always was.

Levi’s grip on Eren’s hand is strong and reassuring. He holds fast and firm until the hand in his relaxes. He himself froze the sight of the Wings of Freedom above him, at least temporarily. Once the initial shock wore off, he realized that this was nothing new. How could there be a fear of what has already happened? They know it all. They were there. They remember it as clear as day and nothing about that life can be altered. It has already passed.

Levi’s voice when he speaks to Eren is as strong and steady as his hand.

“Do you want to leave?”

Eren blinks a few times at the sound of Levi’s voice, and Levi knows. He gives him a moment. There’s no rush.

“No,” Eren sounds dazed when he finally returns to the present, and he shakes his head a few times to clear away the last remnants of the time before. “No. Let’s go see. That’s actually why I wanted to come here. I heard they had a Survey Corps exhibit and I’ve been really curious about what’s in there. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so…” Eren trails off, unable to find the word to describe the experience. He doesn’t need to.

“Good. Let’s go see how much broken, worthless shit of ours they have in there.”  
   
Eren nods, squeezing Levi’s hand once before pulling his own hand away.  
   
He can’t.  
   
Levi will not release his hold on Eren’s hand. He refuses. This confuses Eren, who questions him.  
   
“Are you sure?”  
   
Levi doesn’t answer. Instead, Eren stumbles when Levi jerks him by the hand with maybe a little too much force, dragging him toward the past that they cannot forget.

 

——

 

“Levi, look! This is about you!”  
   
Eren can barely contain his excitement, giddy over the anticipation of reading all the words of praise that history has for his brave and beloved Captain. Levi doesn’t seem to mind the way that Eren yanks on his hand to pull him to the display case that holds a battered and worn green cloak. Well, the Survey Corps horse breeding exhibit wasn’t that interesting anyway, yet he still feels hesitant to see what is said about him on the plaque that Eren is already reading, silently mouthing the words to himself. Especially since Eren’s eyes widen as he reads over the next line, a look of disbelief washing over him when he turns to look Levi in the face.  
   
Eren turns back to the plaque now that Levi is beside him, and Levi is still avoiding the sight in front of him. It’s then that Eren begins to read out loud.  
   
“Under the command of the Military Police, a titan was trained to repair the breached sections of Wall Maria. Despite their success in reclaiming the wall and allowing the citizens to return to their homes, the Military Police could never truly control the feral nature of the titan they had captured. The military’s trained titan eventually lost control, reverting back to its violent nature and breaking free from its constraints to rampage within the recently repopulated habitations of Wall Maria. It was during the titan’s violent rebellion that threatened to once again destroy Wall Maria that the heroic Captain of the Survey Corps, Levi Ackerman, made the ultimate sacrifice to save the thousands of innocent civilians that faced certain death at the hands of this rogue titan. Captain Ackerman singlehandedly subdued the raging titan, neutralizing the threat without a single civilian casualty. Captain Ackerman succumbed to the injuries he incurred during the fight, but his heroic actions saved the lives of everyone living within Wall Maria.”  
   
A wave of nausea hits Levi when he hears what Eren has just read to him. The nausea is soon joined by rage. An intense, seething rage, one which he is not sure how long he can suppress.  
   
“Do they mean _me_? How can they… the Military Police? What… This is bullshit!”  
   
Eren’s voice echoes off the walls and a few of the museum’s other visitors turn to scowl at his loud and vulgar outburst, one woman even staring Eren down with a look of pure contempt, clamping her hands over her child’s ears. All Levi has to do is calmly respond with a look of his own and the woman immediately backs down, turning tail and ushering her confused child in the opposite direction, as far away from the steely grey death glare as she can get.  
   
Eren looks as enraged as Levi feels and he’s glad that Eren is no longer a titan shifter. But, then again, he isn’t averse to the idea of letting Eren eat a few of these sons of bitches looking at them like they’re the scum of the earth. Especially the ones looking down in disgust at the way he holds Eren’s hand in his own.  
   
“I can’t believe this! How can they get away with writing this… this… _bullshit_!” Eren’s hand runs through his hair, brows pinched and teeth bared, and Levi worries how much of a scene Eren is capable of making now that he can’t transform into the hulking, toothy monster he remembers so clearly.  
   
Levi squeezes Eren’s hand reassuringly, opening his mouth to deliver some insult regarding the contents of historian’s skulls and the honor of their mothers, but Eren interrupts him before he can utter a single, well-deserved curse. His little green-eyed beast tears his attention from the plaque, turning it instead to Levi, gasping, jaw dropping in alarm.  
   
“It says… I killed you? Levi?”  
   
“You do realize that not a word of that is true.”  
   
Eren hisses out a long breath, beginning to relax at Levi’s calm and nonchalant attitude toward the situation.  
   
“Yeah… Yeah. I know. I guess… It’s just… When I saw that, I panicked because…” Eren runs his hand through his hair again, a nervous habit that does nothing to remedy the ever-wild appearance of his rebellious brown mop. He looks at his shoes, distressed at the thought that has rattled his nerves in a serious way.  
   
“I don’t know how you… You never told me how… It wasn’t me, right? I know you said I died first, but you haven’t told me how you d—“  
   
Levi has been dreading that question. He’d hoped to avoid it for as long as possible, even entirely if he had his way. And here Eren is asking him right in the middle of a museum full of… People. Perhaps Levi is luckier than he thought, because he’s been staring vacantly at this crowd of people gathered around the entrance to a special exhibit at the end of the hall. But now that he’s actually looking, something catches his eye. He feels as if his heart is in his throat, swallowing against the the uncomfortable sensation and shaking off the dizziness caused by something he never expected to see again.  
   
A large tour group has congregated around the special exhibit. From this distance he can’t be absolutely sure that it is what he thinks it is, but… The faceted edges of the shiny, translucent object that towers over the crowd are far too familiar to be anything else.  
   
Now it’s Levi who’s yanking Eren away, thanking whatever higher power there is for the excuse to stop Eren’s question dead in its tracks. If he’s lucky again, Eren won’t even care about finishing his question when he sees what lies just beyond. Levi pulls a stunned Eren to where everyone is gathered, pushing his way through the throng of offended people without concern. Eren is still distracted by the dirty looks and complaints the people around the exhibit are hurling at him, so Levi squeezes Eren’s hand even harder this time, thankfully remembering that Eren can’t heal himself now and stopping just short of actually crushing bones.  
   
“Eren.” Levi’s first attempt at getting Eren’s attention is a failure. Deciding that he needs to be a little more direct this time, Levi grabs Eren by the jaw, squishing his cheeks into an inappropriately adorable expression, and forces him to look at what is directly in front of them.  
   
It takes Eren a moment to digest what he’s seeing, and when his mind fully registers what it is, he feels like a titan has just kicked him in the gut.  
   
“Holy fuck.”  
   
An awed whisper is all Eren can manage. He’s struck completely dumb, speechless where he and his Captain stand paralyzed, as frozen in time as Annie Leonhardt, still slumbering in her crystal prison right before their eyes.

 

——  
   
   
 


	7. Only the will to fight can change our world.

 

_"I didn't know."_

_"I suspected."_

_"Then why didn't you do anything?"_

_"..."_

_"I still can't believe it."_

_"I hope he's happy."_

 

\------

 

 

The two soldiers stood frozen in front of that traitor imprisoned in crystal, though crystal may as well have been ice for the chill that creeps into their bones at the sight. They’d thought everything about them was dead and buried long ago, those erstwhile lives remembered only within the corpse-strewn visions in their mind’s eye. Neither man had ever anticipated the crossing of the two, yet there it is. It has happened there where she sleeps in her uniform, her serene expression a stark contrast to the monstrous grimace of pain and desperation she wore only minutes before escaping into the safety of her crystal cocoon. Be she now alive or dead, they did not know, but the image of her there at the base of a crumbling wall transposes so perfectly with her here in the present that there is no way they can deny the truth.  
   
There is no aberrant detail, no deviation of any kind from the last time they saw her, no doubt whatsoever that this is not a replica like the statues of their fallen comrades that line the museum halls, no way it can be a clever forgery. It is her. It is her, untouched by time, the same body, as whole and youthful as it was on that day.  She was successful in her escape from her fate at the hands of her would-be captors. She escaped the bloody end due to her, unlike the soldiers who failed to bring her to justice: the very same soldiers that are here with her now, the soldiers whose lives bled out of them and whose lifeless bodies had already decayed and returned to dust countless lifetimes ago.

It disturbs them.

The silence between them becomes unbearable.

“I remember the day this happened.” The suspension of time shatters at Eren’s words, softly spoken, thick from the dryness of his tongue.

“I called you an idiot.” Levi betrays his feigned unaffectedness by the softness of his voice, which always spoke strong and firm at times such as these.

“I don’t remember that.”

“You were trying to eat her.”

“I don’t remember that, either.”

“I’m not surprised. I don’t think you were aware of anything by that point. I had to cut you out.”

“Oh.” Levi hears the familiar disappointment tinting Eren’s voice. It is no fault of his brash words this time, but it serves as a reminder for him nonetheless. Be gentle. There is nothing to hide now. You have another chance. Do not waste it.

“You were unconscious for a long time.”

“I think I remember waking up. I saw flowers beside my bed.”

“You were very strong.”

A hush falls between them.

“I think I’ve seen enough. Let’s go.”  Levi is squeezing Eren’s hand, and Eren sounds absent when he finally replies.

“Yeah.”

 

——

 

The pair remain mute as Levi guides them to the exit. Levi has no qualms about taking control. He is happy to lead Eren to the safety of the present while Eren remains in a daze, halfway between this world and the last. They’ve almost made it to the light of the doors that will open to the here and now when something seems to wrench Eren out of his state and seize his attention.

Levi looks over to the boy at his side, who is now staring at some unknown point beside him, rubbing his forehead roughly, palming away the fog from his eyes.

“Hey, Levi? Could you wait right outside the doors for me? I have to use the bathroom.”

Odd, Levi thinks, and he hesitates to leave Eren alone inside, but Eren has asked this of him and he will not deny him.

“I’ll be right outside. I won’t budge until you’re out.”

“Thanks. Be out in a minute.”

 

——

 

He watches Levi walk to the exit, and when Levi finally passes through the glass doors and he’s sure he can no longer see him, he makes his way to what he saw before.

A spotlight shining on a row of green behind glass.

 ——

 

“Levi, let me get something out of your bag real quick.”

“Sure.”

Levi turns his back so that Eren can unzip the large backpack he always carries. Eren pretends to rummage through the bag while he reaches behind himself, lifting the back of his shirt to remove the green cloth he’d folded and tucked into the back of his pants. When he shoves his arm down into the bottom of the bag, that bundle is left behind and replaced in his hand by a bottle of water he’d purchased the previous night.

“Found it! Are you thirsty?” Eren opens the bottle and swallows several large gulps before offering it to Levi, who gladly takes it and drinks.

Levi is none the wiser.

 

——

 

It isn’t a long walk from where they are now. They offer few words to each other while, hand in hand, they pass by the scenic landscape of the new, ancient city. Perhaps it’s the heavy, contemplative state that fell over them upon seeing those things that they saw together when they first lived. Perhaps it’s just the strength of all those shared memories that surface when things are still and quiet. Whatever the reason, everything feels so much stranger than before. There are a few instances where Levi begins to pull Eren in the wrong direction and not even realize he’s doing it, where Eren squeezes his hand and gently, graciously guides him back to the path they are now meant to take. It unsettles Levi, but Eren shows no hint of concern and makes no comment when it happens again.

Not even when Levi stops, abruptly shoving Eren to the side so that he will not trip on the obstacle blocking their path: a splintered wooden beam, no doubt fallen from the rafters of the demolished house beside them.

 

——

 

Before they know it, they’re making the turn onto the street where Eren lives. It’s only now that Eren comes to a stop and faces Levi.

With an apologetic look in his eyes, Eren squeezes Levi’s hand one last time before pulling them apart, and the final stretch of pavement toward Eren’s home feels shorter to them than the space between their bodies.

 

——

 

“Mom, this is Levi, my friend from school.”

Eren wasn’t expecting to see his mother sitting in the kitchen when he and Levi opened the back door to go inside. She looked up from her newspaper at the sound of the door clicking open, settling her eyes on the unfamiliar guest that Eren had brought home with him. Eren hadn’t thought about how he’d introduce Levi to his mother… So he just said the first thing that came to mind.

Eren mentally thanks his Captain for carrying over his ever-impassive nature into this life. 

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” Levi also seems to have retained all of the proper airs and etiquette of a high-ranking military officer, and Eren’s mother seems quite pleased when Levi leans forward slightly in a charming, gentlemanly bow. Eren internally sighs in relief. 

“Oh, yeah… About last night. We were working on this… history project together, a big one, and we ended up working on it all night.”

“Well, I’m happy to see that you’re finally putting some effort into your studies at least. Just don’t let it happen again.”

“Sorry. It won’t happen again. Levi and I are still working on that project, so is it okay if he stays here tonight?”

“That’s fine. Just try to keep it down, sweetheart, I don’t want you boys up being rowdy all night. I have another early meeting tomorrow.”

“Thanks, mom. I will.”

“All right. It was nice meeting you Levi. There’s dinner in the oven. Night, you two.”

“Night, mom.”

 

——

 

Eren and Levi decided to turn in early as well, but not until they’d filled their stomachs with a warm, home-cooked meal prepared by Eren’s mother. Levi had never experienced such a thing in this life or his first. He thinks of how Eren lost his family in the fall of Shiganshina and became a refugee at such a young age, how one single day changed so much for him. Levi never had a home or a family, but Eren had, and maybe it was easier for him to go from starving in the underground to joining the military and the stability that came with that sort of life.

Not Eren.

Overnight he lost the security of a home, a family, a loving mother, home-cooked food, and was thrust unexpectedly into the life of a refugee, of trying to survive on a single ration of stale bread each day. And then when he enlisted and entered his own life in the military, it was hardly an improvement to go from a starving orphan in a refugee camp to a terribly young cadet. The military, with its brutal training and dirty, overcrowded barracks. The terrible stench of the yeast-preserved military rations that still barely filled the stomachs of growing children being sent off to war. For Eren to enter that life at such an early age… It tugged at Levi’s heart to think about.

Even though this world is still ravaged by war, the same war no less, it is a comfort to him knowing that Eren has not had his home and family and security taken from him in the same terrible way this time around.

“Here, you can go wash up and change into these.”

Levi is sitting on Eren’s bed, looking around Eren’s room when Eren finishes digging through his dresser drawers and hands Levi a pair of boxer shorts and a soft t-shirt to sleep in. He saw all of the things that Eren had on display in his room. The kinds of possessions he chose to surround himself with in a safe, comfortable space that’s all his own. Not a damp and lonely dungeon where he sleeps chained to a hard bed with cold, rusted irons around his wrists. Not military barracks shared with dozens of scared young soldiers. Not any of the broken-down and abandoned places that they had no choice but to hide in, no hint of the danger of being pursued that forced them to constantly move from one to another too quickly to even settle in and call home.

“Thank you.”

 

——

 

Levi himself finds an alien sense of security in the feeling of being surrounded by warmth and listening to the steady patter of water falling onto the shower floor. He hasn’t had so many showers in such a short period of time in years and he was unable to resist the urge to be clean when he saw the shower in the bathroom across from Eren’s room where he went to change. He’s aware that he is perfectly clean yet the feeling of dirt on cold skin is still fresh in his mind.

The hot water runs down his body and the constant hiss of it raining over him from the silver showerhead is a white noise that lulls him into a meditative state. He pictures the things he saw in Eren’s room. A desk, a lamp, a dresser, all commonplace furnishings with nothing special about them. It was the framed photo on the dresser that was uncommon. The frozen image of a child gripping onto the flowing skirt of the woman he hides behind, only one big, green eye visible on the cherub-like face that peeks out from the safety of his hiding place. At his other side is a man smiling in amusement, looking down at the shy child while his hand appears to be playfully patting the boy’s messy brown hair.

In one corner sits a record player. Above it a pencil drawing is pinned to the wall. From what he could tell from where he sat on the opposite side of the room, the drawing depicted the shapes of two people in motion, the positions of their bodies suggesting that they are dancing a formal dance, a waltz, perhaps.

And that was not the only drawing pinned to the walls. There were so many of them. Some black and white, crisp outlines in pencil or smudged silhouettes in charcoal. Others were in color, vibrant and neat in ink, soft and dreamy in watercolor, so many shades of green, and of red, and of the stark emptiness of white.

 

——

 

Eren takes it upon himself to empty a dresser drawer and unpack Levi’s few belongings, giving him his own space in the antique wooden chest. There aren’t many things inside Levi’s backpack besides some worn and dirty clothes, a small amount of change, packets of crushed and broken crackers, nothing of any real worth to be found. It saddens him to see that Levi has lived such a life, and he’s determined to fix that. He doesn’t know exactly how yet, but for now he’s going to do anything he can to make Levi a home here with him.

He finishes arranging Levi’s things in the drawer that he's decided now belongs to Levi. Well, all but two things, which he is stuffing into the back of his underwear drawer when he hears Levi padding barefoot into the room and closing the door behind him until it clicks shut.

The wooden drawer screeches from the haste at which Eren shoves it back into place, and he spins around with his back to it to see Levi approaching him. What Eren sees amuses him, a tiny laugh pulling his lips up into a smile.

“You showered!”

“Mmm hmm.” Levi hums against Eren’s chest, his still-damp hair darkening the shoulder of Eren’s shirt when he rests his head there. His arms are wrapping around Eren's waist, his body pressing against Eren’s and radiating heat left over from the shower.

“Where’s your shirt?” Eren mumbles against Levi’s clean-smelling hair, returning the embrace, his hands covering nearly half of Levi’s small but muscular back.

“Is there a problem?” The way he buries his face in Eren’s shirt and nuzzles his face against his chest muffles Levi's voice. Eren’s answer is good enough for Levi, who’s been crushed even closer to Eren’s body by strong arms and warm hands.

 

——

 

The sun has set and Eren’s room is dark now, the moon still not high enough in the sky to offer any of its light to dilute the darkness inside.

“Friend from school, huh?” Levi’s head has found its way back onto Eren’s broad chest, his now-dry hair pulled back, his cheek now graced with the sensation of bare flesh against it.

“Er, yeah… Sorry about that. I had to think up something to tell my mom and I wasn’t expecting her to be waiting for me.”

“Smooth.”

“What? It was the first thing that came to mind! I mean, you look small enough to...”

“Watch it, brat.”

“Come on, now. You know I don’t mean anything by that.”

“I’m just teasing you. Quite honestly, I thought that was hilarious. Friend from school. The fucking irony.”

“Why is that ironic?”

“Well, one, I never went to school,” Levi pauses to think. “No, that’s not true. I did go for a little while but it was bullshit so I dropped out.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. Not like there was anyone who’d care. Besides, it’s not like I _needed_ to go. Why bother with all that shit when you came out of the womb knowing how to read and write and fuck and cut the heads off of giant cannibals. It wasn’t the same for you?”

“Now that you mention it, it was. I just never really thought anything of it.”

“Then there’s your answer.”

“So _that’s_ why you said it was ironic when I told you my school was named after you.”

“It’s a good joke. I’ll have to thank whoever was responsible for that.”

“What’s the other reason it was funny? It sounded like there was more than one.”

“You told her I was your friend. You know, just your two-thousand-year-old friend who used to fuck you until you screamed loud enough for Erwin to hear all the way in his office.”

“Oh… yeah. About that. Umm… My mom doesn’t know I’m… you know.”

“An adorable little cocksucker who loves taking it up th—“ Levi is interrupted by Eren’s hand clamping over his mouth and he’s tempted to bite him for his audacity.

“Levi, _shush_! What if she hears you? She’s right across the hall!”

“That would be a problem?” The hand still over his mouth obscures Levi's words. Eren lets his hand fall away with a sigh.

Levi thinks Eren seems pained from the way he grits his teeth and sighs again. Levi puts his attitude away for now and becomes serious. He gives Eren his full attention and waits for him to answer.

“Yeah, it would.”  
   
   
   
 


	8. I'll kill them all, every last one of them!

  
  
  
  
_“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to have to see this.”_

 

———

 

“Yeah, it would.”

Levi wasn’t expecting that kind of answer from Eren. He assumed Eren was just embarrassed about his mother potentially overhearing the details of their past... acts of coition, or even perhaps overhearing him loudly engaging in some new carnal dalliance with her son. Levi wouldn’t have cared about any of that. This, though…?

“You’re ashamed of me."

Eren runs his fingers back through his hair, a nervous habit he carried over from his first life. He heaves yet another sigh, and the sound carries with it the heaviness of many unspoken emotions. Frustration. Anxiety. Worry. Sadness. Guilt. Penitence. Eren’s hands leave Levi’s skin and he pushes himself upright on the bed. He looks down at Levi with something akin to remorse in his eyes and Levi can’t stop the ache in his chest or escape the choking grip of the invisible hand around his throat.

“You really think that?”

Levi can’t seem to produce any form of speech from his constricted throat. He can barely breathe.

“Come here.” Eren reclines slightly against the pillows, arms open wide. Levi is slow to accept the invitation so Eren brings Levi to him by force. His embrace is strong and unyielding but filled with such a gentleness that Levi doesn’t protest when Eren pulls him up to rest against his chest, though Eren notices an unusual reluctance from Levi. “I’ve never once been ashamed of you. How could you even think that? You’re my hero, you were _everyone’s_ hero. I love you just as much now as I did back then,” Eren pauses, a memory flashing into his consciousness for a heartbeat then disappearing. “That’s not it at all. I would never- _could_ never be ashamed of you.”

“But you don’t want your family to know about me.” Levi may have jumped to conclusions, but it doesn’t seem so irrational to him to think that someone would be ashamed to be seen with some sort of _derelict_ , some useless, dirty drifter who used to be Humanity’s Strongest but now is nothing.

“That’s… that’s not true. I would love for everyone to know you’re mine. It’s just… My mom doesn’t... _Can't_ know I’m not… Interested in women."

Eren, never having been one to hold back any thought that crosses his mind or miss the chance to tell a story, is unusually guarded now. Hesitant. Levi’s never known Eren to lie, either, and despite his desire for a full explanation, he takes Eren at his word. He decides not to pry about why and spares Eren the discomfort of divulging any more than he already has. There is disappointment lingering within him, and he recalls how many times it was him disappointing Eren. He recalls how they both came to accept that disappointment, bitter as it was, because having each other was the best they could hope for in that cruel, uncertain world. It was damn near miraculous that they had as much time together as they did while their friends and comrades were constantly torn from each other by the merciless hands of death. Death spared no one, no king or criminal, and lovers, it seemed, bore the greatest of death’s ire. It is beyond a miracle, he thinks, that fate has given them a second chance, and Levi will not let it slip through his fingers.

Levi runs his fingers through Eren’s hair, always so soft, his hand then coming to rest upon Eren’s cheek, thumb brushing gently over the equally soft skin of it. “Tell me about yourself.” _I want to get to know you. I want to get to know you again, I want to know more, I want to know everything about you. Please, give me everything that I never got the chance to have, let me give you everything I never gave you. This time you will have it._ _I died with regret. I will give you what you yearned for, I will give you everything I selfishly and shamefully denied you._

“Hm?”

“So your mother somehow doesn’t know you like men.”

“It never came up.”

“Oh?”

“I never dated anyone, and she’d always ask when I was going to bring home a nice girl, so I’d laugh it off and then sometimes she’d tease me about it. I never gave her any reason to suspect anything. Besides, I’ve never been interested in a man.”

“That’s news to me.”

“Okay, maybe that’s not the best way to say it. I’ve only ever been interested in _you_. All my life I’ve had these memories of you and they hurt so bad. There’s no way I could have been interested in anyone else. Even if you weren’t real, you were the only one for me. I can’t imagine loving anyone else.” Eren hesitates again, another uncomfortable silence, and it is only seconds but to Levi it feels like hours. “Levi…?”

Levi feels ill at ease, the weight of regret and anxious anticipation of what Eren may say next forcing him to hold his breath in apprehension. “What is it?” He swallows.

“After I died, did you…” Eren is experiencing the same anxiety, apparently, as his words are just as apprehensive and tense as Levi himself feels. At hearing the shaky timidness that stains those questioning words that Eren was so hesitant to say, Levi releases a breath of relief. Though Eren’s question is incomplete, Levi knows exactly what he is asking, and it is a question that he has no reluctance to answer.

“There was no one after you.” How could there have been? How could there _ever_ be?

Levi has always disbelieved in the idea of truth and the belief that the world exists in black and white. Truth to him is all a matter of perspective, relative to each man’s experience with no concrete right and wrong. This, though, is the one thing he knows to be a truth unshakeable. What he has told Eren, and what he thinks but does not say, is true beyond all shadows of doubt. There was, _is_ , only one for him, and that is Eren. The universe, he thinks, in all its grand mystery seems to agree by the sheer impossibility of what it has done: bringing them back together, here, now, thousands of years later, defying the will of Death and surpassing the bounds of all logic and belief.

There are many things that he has always known Eren to be: brave, impulsive, passionate, caring, and, most evident at this very moment, sentimental. He should not be surprised that Eren would care about such a thing, yet he does, and Levi finds it both endearing and comforting since he secretly (and reluctantly) admits to himself that he might just _possibly_ feel similarly affected by the same thought if the situation were reversed. He rises up and kisses Eren.

There are also many things that Levi has always known himself to be, and sentimental is not one of them. Maybe. Awkward in matters of the heart, however…

“What about your father? Does he know?” He changes the subject to something far less sentimental.

“He’s dead.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. He died when I was young. He was a military doctor, he did a lot of research on titans. Got eaten by one that showed up inside the walls. You know, it’s funny…”

“That your father got eaten by a titan?”

“Now that you mention it, yeah, that is funny… In a fucked-up sort of way? Maybe funny isn’t the right word for it. At least it wasn’t me this time. That’s not what I meant, though. What’s funny is that I don’t really miss him. I mean, of course I cared about him, about both of my parents. They raised me and they’ve always been pretty good to me, but they’re just not… They don’t feel like my real parents. Is that weird?”

Levi thinks on this for a brief moment and comes to the conclusion that no, it isn’t weird. If you think about it, they really _aren’t_ his parents, despite what biology has to say on the matter. Eren doesn’t wait for him to answer.

“Sometimes I see things, like parts of them are there, little things that remind me…”

“Like how your father was a doctor who studied titans,” Levi recalls all the times that Eren told him about his father, and how he thought he had left them, and how he felt when his memories were stirred and he realized that his father had not abandoned him, but that Eren himself, as a titan, had eaten him. “And he got eaten by a titan.”

“Yeah, stuff like that. Or how my new mother’s eyes are the same color as mine. Everyone always told me I got my eyes from my mother. Little things. And then I wonder if they’re like me, if they just can't remember and it’s really them… But it’s not them. I know it’s not them. I don’t love them like I loved my real mom and dad. It was sad when he died, but I never think about him and I don’t miss him.”

“So your father was a doctor. I don’t think you ever told me what your mother did.”

“She was a barmaid before I was born, and then she stayed home to take care of me and Mikasa. I miss her. I miss everyone.”

“What about now?”

“Mom’s a military doctor, too. Does the same kind of research my dad did. That’s how they met.”

“Then, your family is well off, I take it?”

“Yeah. They were both experts at the top of their field, and you know how much the military pays.” Levi doesn’t actually know, but doctors have always been well-paid, and with Eren’s comment about the military, he surmises that Eren’s family must not just be wealthy, but excessively so.

“Ah. That must be why you didn’t think twice about paying for all that stuff.”

“Mmm hmm. And my dad left me an inheritance when he died, and the money’s just been sitting there ‘cause I never really wanted anything, so I never spent much of it.” Levi doesn’t feel quite so guilty now.

Levi’s hand has been unconsciously skimming over Eren’s skin while they talk quietly in the peaceful dark of Eren’s room. When he recognizes himself doing this, stroking his fingers up and down the hard planes of Eren’s chest and abdomen, he reminisces about all those times before when he’d partake of that warm, soft skin with his hands, or his lips, or with the skin of his own bare body pressed close and writhing against it. He remembers the heat, and, oh, how incredibly _hot_ Eren’s skin always was, and how he reveled in that obscene pleasure of flesh sliding against flesh, slick with the sweat of their burning ardor.  He feels his hunger growing as he loses himself in recollection, his hands continuing to skim along the warmth of Eren’s body as he does. The skin in his mind at once conflicts with the skin under his hands when Levi begins to perceive alien patterns that mar its remembered smoothness. No, this is something completely new. It is the sensation of his fingers brushing over permanently raised lines on skin that once could never be blemished.

“Eren…” Levi’s fingers travel down Eren’s side, tracing a prominent scar above his hip, so thick that it must have been put there recently, different from the rest that seemed smaller, smoother, likely as healed as they will ever be. “How did you get these?”

“Fights.”

“Some things never change.”

“Some things do,” Eren replies bitterly. “I’m not the one starting the fights this time, and Mikasa isn’t here to swoop in and save the day now.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Okay, so maybe there were a _few_ that I might have started…”

“Hah!”

“… over you.” That’s nothing new to Levi. Eren was always jumping in to defend his Captain’s honor whenever he heard someone talking shit. The kid loved fighting, what could he do? If Eren wanted to do something, he was going to do it, and sometimes not even Levi could convince him otherwise. But now he’s intrigued. He wants Eren to elaborate.

“When I was really young, I’d talk about my memories a whole lot with other kids. I thought they were normal, like everyone had them. It was pretty much all I talked about. I guess the other kids thought it was some sort of make-believe game, or a story I made up, and they got frustrated when I never grew out of it. Some just ignored me, most of them thought I was weird, a lot of people thought there was something seriously wrong with me. You know, that crazy kid who thinks he’s a titan. There were a few little fights over it, kid’s stuff, nothing major, but word got back to my parents about it. Then they started getting concerned that I was _too_ obsessed with my imaginary stories, it’s unhealthy, I must not be right in the head.

I couldn’t stop, though! It was too much, it was all I could think about! Imagine seeing an entire life playing out in your head constantly! By the time I got older, _everyone_ thought I was insane. I couldn’t cope with all my memories, no one understood, I just couldn’t relate to _anyone_ anymore, so I kept to myself. Kids started bullying me even worse after that, calling me names, picking on me ‘cause now I was that creepy loner who’s always talking to himself.

For a while I fought back. It happened so much, though, and _I’d_ always be the one getting in trouble even though I was only trying to defend myself. Eventually I just decided that it wasn’t worth trying to defend myself if I was just going to take the blame for starting the fight. Fighting back never did me any good. I was gonna get beat up either way, so I just gave up and let them do it until they got bored. Then they’d do it again, and when they stopped getting a response out of me, they’d do it worse and worse each time. I’ve had more black eyes than I can count. Gotten a few bones broken. Cuts, scrapes, bruises. Nothing I couldn't handle.

When they decided that I hadn’t learned my lesson, that’s when things got really bad. Said they needed to try harder to beat some sense into me… And I just laid there and took it. There were pipes a few times… And sometimes they had broken bottles. That’s where I got most of these.”  Eren smooths his fingertips over his collarbone, over his upper chest, down his arm. It’s dark in the room where they are, but not so dark that Levi can’t see how dejected Eren looks, and how he winces when Levi brushes his thumb over the scar on his side again.

“What about this one?” Levi can’t believe what he’s hearing. He’s furious, he’s confused, he’s concerned and disgusted, and at the center of all that he’s feeling, he’s heartbroken. Eren had suffered so much back then. It’s hard to believe that anyone could endure all that Eren had to endure, and Eren never blamed anyone but himself. Levi hoped that this new life had been kind to Eren, that he would never have to go though anything like that again, and now he comes to find that it hasn't?

“I was walking home from school and these kids followed me. They were saying all kinds of stuff to me, that I was crazy, that I was in love with a statue and I wanted to... I tried to ignore them but they just wouldn’t _stop_! And then they started talking about you, because of the statue. I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t try to fight them, all I did was yell at them to leave me alone... Which apparently was the wrong thing to do ‘cause they decided that I needed to be put in my place for talking back to them, so they pushed me into an alley and started beating me. One of them punched me right in the stomach and I tried to catch my breath and kinda just reacted without thinking about it and ended up pushing him to get him away. I didn’t notice that he’d pulled a knife on me until it was already in me. They didn’t expect that guy to go that far and they freaked out and ran away and just left me there in the alley. I walked all the way home with a huge fucking stab wound in my side, I’m surprised I didn’t pass out. Mom patched it up for me. She seemed disappointed.”

There was so much hurt in Eren’s voice and it was all Levi could do to keep himself from immediately going out and slaughtering everyone who was responsible for daring to hurt Eren. Nobody, he vowed, _nobody_ would ever lay a hand on Eren again. He’d make sure of it.

“I remember the fights I used to get into back then. It always hurt a little, not like it does now. Everything always healed. Now I have all these scars. They’ll never heal like they used to.”

Levi presses his hand firmly over the scar on Eren’s side, as if that could somehow heal it, as if it would do any good to protect him after it has already happened.

“It’s ugly, isn’t it.”

“No, Eren. It’s beautiful. I’m glad you have it.” Eren is at a loss. He doesn’t know how to respond to what Levi just said, or what he even means by it, or how he could think something so ugly could ever be beautiful, and he just gapes at Levi with eyes open wide, mouth trying and failing to form words, so confused that he’s wondering if he actually heard him correctly.

“I’m not happy that you got it. To tell you the truth, I’m feeling downright murderous. What I meant is that I’m happy you have that scar because that means you survived. You know how dangerous it is to get stabbed in the guts? Shit, kid. Every scar on your body is like a present to me right now. I’ll kill whoever did this to you, but all those scars mean you’re not dead because of what they did. Fuck.” Levi presses his palm to his brow and scrunches his eyes tightly shut and he thinks he feels a headache coming on from all this emotional whiplash.

Levi is so unguarded right now that Eren can’t resist pressing a kiss to Levi’s deeply furrowed brow. Something about seeing Levi get so openly emotional over him warms Eren to his very core. He thinks they’ve both had enough of the bad memories for the night, and Eren decides he doesn’t care about any of that anyway, not now that Levi is here. Suddenly everything in his life has become so irrelevant.

“You know, fights aren’t the only thing I remember.”

Levi looks up at Eren from where he’s been rubbing his brow in frustration. He’s the one who asked Eren to tell him about his life, but now he’s not so sure he can handle any more shocking revelations right now.

“Look,” Eren points upward at the painting that hangs on the wall beside the bed, and Levi’s eyes follow.  “Did you see any of these?” Eren is referring to the sketches and drawings and paintings that cover every wall in the room. Some are framed artfully and properly hung, while others are pinned sloppily, crookedly, one on top of another, some images unclear, some distinct, large and small, paint and pen, black and white or vibrantly colored. Yes, Levi did see them, though he didn’t get the chance to take a close look at any of them.

“This one right here over the bed? Can you tell what it is?” All Levi can discern in the dark is a vaguely triangular shape that he can’t identify.

“That’s you on the day I turned into a titan for the first time. I remember that the first thing I saw when Armin pulled me out was you standing there with the wings of freedom on your back, and the way you looked back at me, and god, I swear my heart stopped when our eyes met.” Eren points again, this time to a large canvas on the other side of the room.

“See that big one over there? That big hand? That’s my hand with you in the middle of it, from the time you told me that you trusted me, and you stepped up onto my hand and let me lift you up onto my shoulder.”

“Eren, did you make all of these?”

“I had to. I had all these memories, Levi. All these people, and things that happened, and places I’d seen. And you. I saw you every time I closed my eyes and I missed you. I needed you. I needed to see you again, and I couldn’t. So I drew you. It’s stupid, but it was all I could do to make you real and I just wanted to be near you.”

“I remember you used to draw back then, too. Did you know I kept that little drawing you did of the dog? The one you drew on the back of the report that I was supposed to give to Dot Pixis?”

“Seriously?!” Eren is a touch sheepish at the mention of that particular event. It was one of the nights where Levi had a late meeting, and he had decided to wait up for him. He was sitting at Levi’s desk reading a book that turned out to be very boring, so he began absentmindedly doodling on one of the blank sheets of paper in front of him. He’d seen a dog earlier that day and it had a very funny kind of marking on its face, and he wished that Levi could have seen it, and before he realized it he had drawn a very sloppy rendition of how he remembered it to look. It wasn’t until the next day when Levi was gathering the reports off his desk that he found the drawing… On the back of a rather important proposal for increasing funding for the Survey Corps. Levi wasn’t angry, but still, Eren was red to his ears in embarrassment when Levi had told him what he’d done. He never knew that Levi kept it. As embarrassed as he is about that particular memory, it warms him to know that Captain Levi, who hated clutter and excess, cherished him so much that he’d hang on to unnecessary little keepsakes like that.

Eren is feeling extremely fond of Levi right now.

“I remember other things, too.”

“Oh?” Levi detects a certain change in Eren’s tone of voice and it puzzles him.

“Yeah,” Eren lowers his voice so that he has to lean in close to Levi to be heard. “All my life I’ve remembered _so many_ confusing things, Levi, even before I knew what it was I was remembering. Whenever I thought about them, I’d start to feel strange and…”

Levi’s heart begins to pound when Eren shifts his body, turning over to hover above him on his hands and knees, his head dropping down low to whisper breathy words against Levi’s ear.

“Do you know what I remembered?”

“Tell me.”

“I remembered how you used to fuck me _so good_ ,” Eren moans out the last two syllables, breath hot against Levi’s ear, Levi’s pulse racing and body tingling in response. “I’d start to get hard here,” Eren demonstrates, bringing one hand down between them to press against his groin, palm sliding slowly over his own length through the material of his boxer shorts, stealthily adjusting himself to hide the tent he seems to have pitched there, eventually returning his hand to its original position on the bed beside Levi’s head. He hears Levi gulp and he smirks. “…and want to touch myself.”

Levi swallows hard again, throat dry,  tongue flicking out to wet his lips, voice sounding strained and desperate when he rasps out a single breathless command. “Show me.”

Eren groans, biting his lip, rising up onto his knees with Levi still lying on the bed between them. Levi watches Eren, whose eyes are still closed in remembrance as he brings his hands to rest teasingly at his hips, thumbs hooking under the waist of his thin shorts. Levi is certain that he must have been doused in fuel and set alight from how the cold sweat on his skin was just replaced by waves of heat that lap at every inch of him.

“Oh, it was so _good_ , Levi, how you’d moan out my name with your cock up inside me.” Levi sees how Eren’s eyes stay closed when he speaks, and how he continues to bite his lip at the memory, and how desire is practically dripping from that low voice of his, and it’s all too much for him. A moan that takes the form of Eren’s name escapes Levi’s throat without permission. “ _Yeah,_ ” Eren breathes, “Yeah, just like that. I’d always get so hard just _thinking_ about it, remembering how good it felt to be stretched around your cock, the way you’d always start out by fucking me nice and slow…”

Levi’s heart is pounding so hard now that he thinks he might die at any moment. Eren’s hands have just moved. It was only a twitch, but it was enough to lower those infuriating shorts just that much lower on his hips. And Eren’s hand is moving again, decisively now. Levi is holding his breath and is absolutely certain now that it was his very last one. Has his heart stopped? He freezes, doesn’t even blink as he watches Eren pull down the front of those loathsome, despicable, worthless goddamn shorts, how dare they obstruct such a magnificent view?

He groans as Eren reveals himself inch by inch. The tapering muscle that entices him to look lower, the dark hair that Levi knows is just a frame for the work of art that is Eren’s… His line of thought ends abruptly, anything on his mind completely forgotten the instant that the head of Eren’s upright cock is uncovered. He pants, surely he must be dying, and what a perfect death this will be if that is the last thing he ever sees. Not yet, though. Not until he sees more. His wish is granted, welcoming the sight of Eren’s erection springing free from its confines with a groan that his bitten lip fails to stifle. The way Eren’s lips are parted and the mischievous look in his eyes winds him up more than he thought possible and neither of them have even been touched yet.

Levi has never forgotten how it felt to be touched by Eren. He aches at the memory of it. The desire to feel Eren’s writhing body, skin pressed to slick skin beneath him, is not at all diminished from when he had been reminiscing about it earlier. If anything it’s even more intense now. It’s been so long, and even though they slept nude together just last night, it was nowhere near enough to sate Levi’s hunger for that burning skin against his own. As much as he despises the idea of restraint at the moment, he knows he should not give in to the temptation to flip Eren over and fuck him hard enough to make up for the last 2,000 years. He promised to give him what they could not have before and mounting him like a dog in heat does not fit the bill. Levi fights the urge, reminding himself over and over to look and not touch, _do not touch him, not until he’s ready_. Levi wants it to be what Eren wants and _how_ Eren wants and _when_ Eren wants. He controls himself even though he thinks he’d rather fight a horde of titans than keep his hands to himself right now.

Eren only pushes his shorts down to the top of his thighs and somehow that’s even more arousing a sight than Levi expected. Arousing as it is to him, it’s nowhere near as arousing as watching Eren’s chest rising and falling with shortened breaths, staring Levi down while he slowly wraps his fingers around his cock. He watches Eren closely. He remembers how it felt to have his hand around Eren in the same way and he wants nothing more than for it to be his hand there and not Eren’s own. Uneven breaths pass over Levi’s parted lips and he can’t tear his eyes away from what’s happening in from of him, not even if he wanted to. There’s something unfamiliar in the way Eren is stroking himself, something incongruous with the memory Levi has of seeing him do this before, and Levi finds that he’s grateful for this opportunity to observe for another reason entirely. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s not exactly sure what he should do when he touches Eren now that his anatomy is a bit different. He can’t do some of the things that Eren used to love, and for the very first time he feels insecure in his ability to please him. Levi is still voraciously devouring the visual feast laid out for him when Eren begins to talk again.

Levi’s cock twitches from a sudden flare of arousal that makes him gasp when he realizes that Eren has switched to speaking in the old tongue to describe his memories of their past sexual encounters in _explicit_ detail.

“ _Levi…_ ” Eren is just as breathlessly aroused as Levi is, and Levi shivers at how evident that is when Eren pants his name. “I want to watch you too.”

A stupefied ‘ _yeah_ ’ is the only form of acknowledgement Levi can give since he’s been struck inarticulate by hearing Eren tell him what he wants at the same time as he sees him squeeze his own cock as if trying to hold himself back.

Apparently Levi’s body can still function without its brain because it seems to have acted entirely on its own. Levi had barely blinked, but somehow in that brief instant he’d managed to shuck his own shorts ( _Eren’s,_ actually) down his thighs. He regains his senses to find Eren eyeing his newly-exposed erection so hungrily that it’s borderline alarming, the way he's looking at him is eerily similar to that of a starved wolf the instant before it pounces on its prey.

And that wolf does pounce, wrestling his prey with all the speed and strength of a predator driven by hunger and instinct, though the end result is entirely dissimilar as it is the prey who now pins the predator. Eren has reversed their positions and now Levi is the one kneeling over him. At some unknown point during that brief surge of adrenaline and tangling limbs, two pairs of underwear seem to have vanished into thin air, neither party certain when or how it happened.

Eren lies beneath Levi, watching him in anticipation of the show he is so eagerly awaiting. Levi happily obliges, moaning at the relief his own hand brings him, easing the ache of having been maddeningly hard and completely untouched this entire time. Eren locks eyes with Levi as his hand returns to his cock, resuming its smooth, languorous strokes up and down the length of it.

Eren has grown quiet now, emitting only soft pants and groans while he watches his lover pleasuring himself above him. And his lover, desiring to make all things equal, is now the one sighing curses and praises in the old and forgotten tongue of their first life. The green-eyed one shivers and whines at each word of praise and every secret name that he loves to be called, and every reaction pleases his lover immensely.

Eren is utterly enraptured by the sight of Levi masturbating to him. His view is perfect- he can see everything with Levi up on his knees like that, and though the motion of Levi’s hand moving over himself is beyond fascinating, he finds that he’s just as interested in absorbing every other little detail of Levi’s body. The way his muscles contract, all the dips and curves that he’s always loved to trace with his fingers, the perfect curve of the cock that always hit him in just the right places. This is the first time they’ve seen each other like _this_ since being born into a new world, and as he observes, Eren begins to note that their bodies both carry faint differences from the ones they first had. Eren is aware that his are more obvious, but he knows Levi’s body so well that he begins to pick up on the subtle differences between then and now.

“You’re smaller this time.”

Levi immediately halts his movements, dropping his hand away and looking down at himself. _Shit, I said that out loud._

“Not that.”

Levi is still panting, but his expression has shifted from one of pleasure to one of confusion.

“Your body. It’s smaller. I remember you feeling heavier on top of me, and… did my hands always cover so much of you?”

“You tend to get smaller when you’ve gone for years without eating every day. Not really a good way of putting on muscle, Eren. Sorry.”

“I’ve always loved how small you are, Levi.”

“Well, lucky you. I at least hoped I’d be taller this time around.”

“You don’t have all those scars and bruises from the gear, either.”

“Guess one thing came out right.”

“I liked those, too.”

“Fuck, Eren. Get me some leathers and I’ll put ‘em back. Maybe if I start eating more than twice a week I’ll even get some muscle back on me.”

“I don’t recall saying I wanted you to change anything.”

“I don’t recall you saying you _didn’t._ ”

“Well, I can’t recall ever seeing _anything_ better than your naked body over me, or anything else that could make me almost come just by looking at it.” Eren pushes himself up on his hands and sits with Levi still straddling his lap. Levi stares at him and nearly jumps when Eren puts his hands on him, running them up his muscular thighs until his hands are on his ass and squeezing so hard that there’ll probably be bruises there tomorrow.

Eren lets go of Levi and lays back down, making sure that Levi notices his eyes on him when he returns to his previous task of stroking himself to the perfect sight in front of him.

“You know it’s only like this because of you. I had to do this every time I thought of you. And you’re the only one I ever think of when I do this.” Eren increases his speed until he’s panting again, tiny moans and whines punctuating every stroke. “Ah… _ah_ … and every time… I came… I had to be careful that… _ah_ … that no one could hear me shouting your name.” Eren’s head rolls back and his eyes close, bottom lip between his teeth and Levi can feel how the body below his is gradually becoming more and more tense.

That’s what finally pushes Levi past the breaking point. He needs to come. Now. He matches Eren’s pace, drinking in every little sound he makes, eyes devouring the impossibly beautiful boy beneath him.

“ _Hah… Levi…_ ” Eren’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and also the most beautiful thing he’s ever _heard_. That breathy whine of his name feels like lightning in his veins and the moan that it causes is loud enough for Levi’s voice to echo off the walls. Eren’s eyes widen in surprise and panic at the unexpected sound, and it’s not that he doesn’t want to hear that over and over again every day for the rest of his life, it’s just that… his mother…

Eren grabs Levi by the waist, pulling him down quickly and roughly to shut him up the best way he knows how. Levi is caught off guard at their lips crashing together so suddenly, and the instant that he opens his mouth to catch a breath, there’s a tongue inside of it. And then, just as suddenly, it was gone, and Eren’s hand was on the back of his head, and Eren’s lips were against his ear, and Eren was whispering in a tone much more devious than before…

“Try to keep it down, _sweetheart_.”

When Levi shudders and feels his face get hot at Eren whispering those words to him, he thinks he may finally understand why Eren likes that so much. He doesn’t have time to think about it because Eren’s hand is on his chest pushing him away with enough force that he might have toppled off the bed if he hadn’t caught himself in time.

Eren is obviously at his limit as well now, all teasing abandoned in favor of reaching a long overdue release. Levi is a big fan of this idea and assumes a similar pace, leaning his head back and closing his eyes to focus on finishing before he passes out from lack of blood flow to his brain. Eren’s body is so hot below him and his shaking legs and short puffs of breath are so fucking erotic to him that it’s all he needs to finally bring him over the edge. He feels the familiar pressure building and he’s close, _so close_ … He cups his hand over the head of his cock just before he comes so he won’t make a mess on Eren’s chest. Levi’s eyes snap open the instant they feel Eren grab his wrist and jerk his hand away, and he looks down just in time to see himself ejaculate over Eren’s body.

Eren must have been watching him. Eren is _definitely_ watching him now that he's spilling across his stomach and chest and even the side of his face because when he sees it happening, his jaw clenches and his shaking body stills for only a second before he’s groaning and adding his own contribution to the mess all over his skin. Levi is observing all of this and he thinks to himself that if he hadn’t just come a few seconds ago, seeing the image of what just transpired could be enough to make him climax.

They stare at each other’s exhausted faces as they come down, panting returning to steady breaths, body temperature losing its fever-like heat, relaxation overcoming them and convincing them that sleep might be even better than an orgasm, and that they should definitely rest their eyes for a little while. But Levi’s eyes don’t rest yet because they’re too busy watching Eren trailing his fingers through the rapidly cooling semen on his stomach with a very satisfied look on his face. Eren’s other hand comes up to caress the back of Levi’s sweat-damp neck and the feeling is so soothing that he almost misses seeing Eren swipe two fingers across his stomach and then bring them to his mouth.

“Eren! Don’t eat th—“ Levi tries to stop him but Eren is fast, so fast that he’s pulled Levi down with the hand on the back of his neck and is kissing Levi with both of them mixed on his tongue before he can finish telling Eren not to do exactly what he has just done.

Levi breaks the kiss with irritation written all over his face as he watches the tip of Eren’s pink tongue dart out to lick his lip, looking as pleased as the cat that swallowed the canary.

“That tasted terrible. I can’t believe you just did that.” Levi can’t hear the quiet laugh that rumbles deep in Eren’s throat over the smacking sounds his tongue is making as he tries in vain to get the taste out of his mouth.

 

 

 


	9. A hot titan date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluffier than a cotton candy sheep fresh out of the dryer.

  
_“Zackley is demanding an explanation.”_  
  
_“I know, Hanji.”_  
  
_“Erwin, what are you going to tell him?”_  
  
_“I can’t lie.”_  
  
_“You don't have to.”_

  
  
——

 

 

“Eren, there’s a note from your mom here.”

Levi and Eren woke up that morning dreading having to face his mother after last night’s… _indiscretion_. It was late enough that they hoped Eren’s mother was still asleep, but certain things may have been loud enough to have carried across the hall, and they were hanging on to the possibility that if they had, it was not enough to wake her. Eren never decided to explain to Levi exactly why he didn’t want her to find out, but he doesn’t think that his previous assumption that he didn’t want her to know that he was corrupting her darling, innocent baby boy ( _oh, if only she knew how completely and thoroughly I have already done that, he thinks_ ) were too far off the mark. It appears that they have escaped their deaths at the hands of a furious mother for the time being.

“Says she’s needed in the field and won’t be home for a few days. Also says not to burn the house down while she’s gone.”

Levi sees the way the brunet’s eyes light up in excitement at this news, that deviant little _shit_ , and he hides his eagerness and delight at the unexpected boon of having a house all to themselves for several glorious days by burying his nose in the sketchbook he stole from Eren’s nightstand. His eyes occasionally glance up from the pages to observe Eren, back turned to him while he busies himself with brewing tea for them both. Every time Eren moves, he snaps his eyes back to the pages and doesn’t have to pretend to be engrossed in the numerous sketches of a life that he recalls all too clearly. He’s just a second too slow the next time he sees the boy move, and Eren catches him staring as he begins to walk over to the kitchen table with two delicate teacups filled with fragrant, steaming tea.

“Like what you see?” Eren’s eyebrow raises, playfully shaking his rear when he turns back to the stove to resume preparing their breakfast.

“Fuck you.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

He walked right into that one. “Oh, you have _no_ idea. Just you wait, brat, and I’ll show you _exactly_ how much. You won’t walk right for a week.”

“You win,” Eren chuckles, the clink of a glass bowl accompanying it as Eren begins to crack eggs against its edge.

Levi watches this wistfully, memories dancing through his mind of Eren performing this same action so many years ago. Eren always cooked for him whenever he got the chance. In fact, Eren is the only one who’s ever cooked for him. It was rare that he got to do so, and rarer still to have something like fresh eggs as opposed to endless of potatoes and limited rations of hard, stale bread. He remembers the time that they stole two chickens that had wandered away from a farm on the outskirts of Survey Corps headquarters. No one in their squad complained, of course, and for a while they were able to enjoy a few bites of egg alongside their horrible military rations.

Sometimes, though, Levi would sneak out to the chicken coop after his early-morning run and stuff an egg into his pocket to bring to Eren before everyone else had risen for the day. It’s not abnormal for a hen to go a few days without laying so no one suspected a thing. One of the perks of being an officer was being able to have first choice of the rare commodities brought in every month, so Levi would always be sure to purchase as much salt, tea, and smoked meat as he was allowed. Another perk of being an officer was never being questioned about dismissing a soldier from their duties or taking their meals in their quarters. One of the perks of being the _lover_ of an officer was, on special occasions, being able to share a private meal that didn’t taste like shit while the others dined on watery stew in the mess hall. And one perk of being the officer that had Eren as his lover was that he was the best cook (aside from Sasha Braus) in the entire Survey Corps. He used all of these to his utmost advantage to spoil Eren rotten. Or as spoiled rotten as one could be, given their position and situation.

He must have been reminiscing longer than he thought, because before he realizes it, Eren is setting a plate in front of him. Eggs, and more than one. Toast with butter, and this time the bread is hard on purpose and delightfully free of mold. His empty stomach growls when he sees the last thing on the plate. Bacon. Levi can’t even remember the last time he ate meat, let alone a hot breakfast. A hot breakfast prepared by an even hotter piece of ass, he might add.

He’s not even disgusted at how Eren still eats like a starved animal.

 

——

 

Eren hasn’t been able to stop thinking about their little exchange during breakfast this morning. Even though it was only a bit of playful banter, it’s something that’s been on his mind since their first night together.

The sound of the running water in the shower masks the wet noise of his fist moving frantically over the aching problem that he’s been hiding nearly all morning. Levi didn’t seem to notice him adjusting himself under the table during breakfast, and he was extremely grateful when Levi insisted on doing the dishes and thought nothing of him excusing himself to take a shower while he did so with his back turned.

He knows that was no empty threat from Levi. He has sufficient proof stored in his mind that Levi is more than able to back up his words. Levi was always a gentle and considerate lover, handling Eren like a precious and fragile thing when they made love. It was Eren who insisted on a little rough treatment every now and then, and after he’d convinced him that he could take anything he could dish out, Levi was happy to indulge him until he screamed so loudly that anyone who passed them in the hallway that day would immediately avert their eyes.

The current setting brings to mind a similar situation he found himself in when showering in Levi’s private quarters. The way that Levi kissed him, and how the warm water cascading over them ran down their faces and into their mouths. The way that Levi lifted him up and pressed him against the cold tile of the shower wall. The way his back slid up and down the wet tile as Levi effortlessly held his thighs up and fucked up into him. The sound of wet skin colliding with wet skin echoing off the walls of the small room. The way Levi dropped his forehead against his chest and grunted when he came. The way that what Levi had given him felt hotter than the water when it ran down his thigh. The way Levi had flipped him around to face the wall the instant his feet were back on the ground, and how it was Levi’s hand on him instead of his own, and how the tile was warm when he placed his hands on it to support himself on shaky legs as Levi brought him to ecstasy for the second time that morning.

He finishes quickly and rinses away the evidence, the act providing only a small relief from the surplus of pent-up energy that seems to double by the hour. Levi hasn’t made a move on him yet, not even last night when they were both _clearly_ ready to go. He wonders why. He wants to. He wants to _bad_. Levi never hesitated to bring Eren to bed before. Only that one time…

He nearly slips and cracks his head on the tile when he hears the sudden loud knocking on the bathroom door.

 _“Eren, hurry the fuck up in there. Are you constipated or something? There better still be hot water.”_ It dawns on him that they have the house to themselves and they could have just showered together.

 

——

 

“Eren. Why are we here?”

“I threw out all your clothes, remember?”

“Don’t you think this is a little, oh, I don’t know, ridiculously fuckin’ fancy?”

“And who is it that used to wear a cravat?”

“You’re not going to let me out of this, are you.”

“Nope.”

Levi sighs in defeat and lets Eren do what he wants, even though he knows there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that he could ever stop him anyway. He even goes so far as to let Eren drag him by the hand into the tailor shop, and when he lets go to get a closer look at the suit on a nearby mannequin, he hears Eren’s familiar loud mouth from all the way across the store.

“Excuse me! I need to have a suit fitted. Oh, yeah, and do you have any cravats?”

Levi sighs again.  Well, at least he didn’t…

“Do you think you can have the alterations done today? I like it but it needs to be a lot shorter. Levi! We need to measure you!”

_Goddammit._

 

——

 

Eren takes Levi around the city while the tailor works, showing him the sights and all of the familiar places buried by time. Eren guides him through streets his ghost still wanders. The alley where he met Armin for the first time, the space now occupied by a small library. The empty stretch where Wall Maria used to be, the very location where he stood in horror as he watched the colossal titan raise its head over the wall right before it destroyed life as he knew it. Where he lived when it happened. The spot over the hills where he kill-... Where Mikasa was adopted into their family. The little alcove where the Garrison played cards and drank instead of keeping watch.

Somehow, Levi knows, even though he never called Shiganshina home. He can feel it in his bones, he can feel the heat of burning buildings on his skin, he can hear the echoes in the back of his mind, the screams of panic and the thunder of massive feet shaking the city to its very foundation.

Eren, at first wistful, now walks with somber steps back toward the tailor’s shop that isn’t where it used to be. Levi knows that there’s nothing he can say or do to erase these visions from either of their minds, and offers only the silent comfort of his presence at his side and the brief touches on Eren’s back when they are out of the view of others on empty stretches of sidewalk.

It’s a great relief to Levi that Eren’s mood improves when they enter the tiny shop, bells jingling cheerfully over the door when they’re invited inside by the greyed but lively tailor behind the counter who beckons them with hands that are wrinkled and gnarled with age, but still as skilled and nimble as they were when he was a young man.

Eren is nearly skipping down the street in excitement, unable to wait a minute longer to get Levi home and out of his clothes... and then into the sleek black suit.

 

——

 

“Levi,” Eren gasps when he returns to the bathroom where Levi is adjusting his cravat in front of the mirror, dropping his own suit from his arms and onto the floor in shock. His hands find better use in being placed on Levi’s shoulders, using them to turn the man around to face him. “You look amazing.” His voice is an awed whisper, not knowing if he’s addressing Levi or merely thinking aloud.

He’s overcome by the sight. He sees not Levi standing there in front of him, but his Captain. His beloved Captain looking exactly as dignified and intimidating as he always did, and how he always should be. The fitted jacket that emphasizes the hidden strength of his solid back and shoulders, the pressed black trousers that accentuate his perfect ass in a way that’s nearly obscene, the white shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons trailing down the front until they disappear under the leather belt that rests on hips below a waist tapered with sinewy muscle that flexes and trembles in a way known only to him.

It’s too much.

“Don’t drool. It’s gross.”

Eren shakes himself from the overwhelming nostalgia, the joy and pain of being taken back to see the man as he was when he fell in love with him. The same man is here with him now, but there’s still that one nagging detail...  “Cap— _Levi_ , there’s something I want to do, if you’ll let me.”

“Mein Schätzchen, do as you please.” Perhaps Eren isn’t the only one feeling nostalgic right now.

Eren is still as a statue at hearing Levi speak those words to him in the same way they’ve played inside his head so very often when they were apart and he was alone with only his longing and his memories. Wide eyes freeze on Levi until he’s forced to take a breath, and he has fight to swallow down the defiant lump in this throat that has rendered him unable to speak. “Take off your clothes.”

“Eren?”

Eren doesn’t answer him. He’s busied himself with the cabinet under the sink, making quite a racket as he rummages through the contents inside in search of some unknown item. Levi does as he says, his task of unbuttoning unusually clumsy from the faint trembling in his fingers. Eren’s attention is elsewhere, having not yet found whatever it is he’s looking for, and he doesn’t even notice Levi leaving the bathroom to hang his suit in his usual neat fashion, smoothing the fabric once it’s hung on the hook on the back of Eren’s bedroom door.

He returns and Eren is still searching, this time in one of the drawers between the cabinets on either side of them. He doesn’t turn to look at him, but he acknowledges Levi’s arrival by addressing him. “Get in the bathtub, I’ll be right there.”

And so he does, but not without feeling a confusing mix of trepidation and excitement. He assumes that he should remove his underwear (still Eren’s, actually) if a bath is what Eren has in mind, and his mind races while he waits patiently, or maybe not so patiently, for Eren.

“Aha! Found it!”

Levi misses what it is that Eren has found and set on the bathroom counter, his view blocked by Eren’s body. He watches Eren finally turn to face him, and his heart races when he sees Eren pull his shirt up over his head, and even more once Eren’s hands drop to his waist to unbutton and kick off his pants. It could be only a bath that Eren wants, but why the hell would he ever ask his permission to have a bath with him? He tries to decipher Eren’s intentions. He leans back against the bathtub, closing his eyes, still running through possible explanations in his mind. Is this it? Is it finally happening? Is he finally going to have Eren? Will he have him right here in the bath, or is this only a preparation for the act? Will Eren then invite him to his bed and beg to be taken in the light of day?

His eyes open when he senses Eren’s proximity and they observe the items that Eren sets on the edge of the tub.

It’s with a small disappointment that he understands. No, not yet.

“You’re going to cut my hair?” After briefly glancing at the scissors and manual hair clippers that rest beside them on the bathtub ledge, he slides forward to allow Eren to sit behind him and enjoys the feeling of Eren’s skin. Eren wriggles into position, fencing him in with his legs, the ticklish sensation of their hair brushing his own sending a prickling shiver from his spine to his skull, and the radiating warmth of the chest so _teasingly_ close to being pressed against his back both relaxes and annoys him.

“Is… is that okay with you? When I saw you dressed up like that, I just thought…”

“Oh, it’s more than okay. I’ve been dying to cut this filthy mess.” Another memory of Eren rises into his consciousness. One of many memories he has of Eren sitting behind him in his bathtub, scissors wielded so carefully, of Eren, for the very first time, trimming the short hair on the back and sides of his head so meticulously, so perfectly that Eren became the only one entrusted with the task of cutting his hair from then on.

He can almost feel Eren smiling behind him.

He picks up the scissors, gathers Levi’s long black hair in his hand, and makes the first cut.

 

——

 

The sun had slunk low on the horizon and the pair was bathed in its fading, golden light. There were few clouds to interrupt their view of the stunning blues that became purples, and those purples fading to rich reds and oranges where they joined together with the glowing yellow star that would soon disappear from the sky until the time it would return to greet them again. For one man, though, the vibrant palette of the sky above them could not even begin to compare to the single shade of green beside him that shines so brightly even the blinding sun seems merely candlelight in comparison.

Now that man is sitting in such a light, and as that light dances and flickers over that beautiful face before him, he knows for certain that those green eyes far surpass any splendor that nature could ever possibly provide. And behind those very same green eyes opposite his own are nothing but thoughts of love and adoration for his Captain.

Levi sets down the finely polished silver fork and knife that he uses to cut his excessively large steak in favor of grasping the delicate stem of the glass that sits to the right of his plate. He watches Eren eat, noticing the effort he’s making to do so neatly. He brings the wine glass up to his lips and nearly chokes on the liquid with his valiant attempt to suppress a laugh at the boy across from him.

“Tell me about yourself,” Try as he might, Eren can’t seem to maintain any form of table etiquette for long. He speaks with his mouth full, and when his question is finished, he uses his thumb to wipe away a bit of sauce from the side of his mouth before cleaning the digit with his tongue.

Levi swallows his wine, returning the glass to its proper place with all the elegance of a noble, and none would guess him to be anything other. Levi’s attention to cleanliness and etiquette bears not a single hint of his true nature; a thug, a rogue, a killer raised in the filthy slums of the underground city who was promoted to a killer on the battlefield.

“There’s not much to tell.”

“Come on.”

“Then tell me what you want to know.”  Eren must be about to ask something serious because he actually sets his silverware down and swallows his food before speaking.

“How did you end up…” He seems to be searching for a polite way to ask.

“A bum? A beggar? Really, Eren. There’s nothing you could call me that I haven’t already called myself.”

“Yeah. That.” Eren's plate is suddenly very interesting to him.

“Well, I grew up in the slums, mom died, dad was a drunk piece of shit, I left home. Bastard probably didn’t even notice. That’s about it.”

“That can’t be everything.” Levi sighs.

“No, that’s pretty much all there is to it. Same as before, except without Mike’s boot grinding my face in the mud. And without you. No point to anything. Started wandering, ended up here, found you and now here we are.”

“You didn’t live here?”  Levi _laughs_.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you where I’m from.”

“So, where are you—“

“Not here. Not even close.”

“And you’re telling me you walked here?”

“I am. I don’t even know why I did. Just… Felt like I needed to. I never even knew where I was or where I was going.”

“And that’s all you’ve done your entire life??”

“I think I’ve already covered that. Anything else?” Eren pauses for a time, thinking.

“What happened after I died?” Levi goes stock still. His eyes harden, lips pressing into a tight line.

“Not right now.” Eren recognizes the tone Levi takes and it sends a shiver through him to this very day. He knows to drop it immediately. The rest of their dinner is shared in silence, with Levi lost in thought and Eren feeling tense, curious, and guilty all at once.

Levi thankfully relaxes on the walk home because the street is dark, people are few and far between, and Eren holds his hand the entire time.

 

——

 

Walking home in the cover of dark ignites an ember inside each of them, crackling and smoldering, growing hotter and brighter with every long and hurried stride they made closer to home. By the time they make it to Eren's doorstep, they’re down to their very last threads of restraint, the desire to taste the wine on each others tongues fraying those threads to the point of snapping entirely. Eren’s mother may not be home, but a certain nosy, or _concerned_ , as Eren’s mother puts it, neighbor is. Eren already has a reputation. He’s always coming home with a black eye or a split lip, and the whispers of the _concerned_ say that he’s a violent child, not right in the head, bless his soul. He doesn’t need one more thing for them to talk about, especially _this_.

Eren has not even turned the lock and already he’s tasting that sweet tongue. Blindly he reaches behind him, fumbling for the deadbolt until his fingers find it and it clicks into the locked position. Now his hands are free to bury themselves in Levi’s hair, running through it, stroking the short part above Levi’s neck, a sensation his fingers have sorely missed. He uses his grip on Levi’s hair to tug him away, to which Levi responds with a gasping whine that sends a hot shiver through Eren’s body.

“Let’s take this upstairs.” is what he’s whispered into Levi’s ear, and Levi’s answer is another glorious, whining moan.

 

——

 

Having _slightly_ sated themselves on each other for the time being, Levi waits while Eren retrieves something from beside his bed. A scrape followed by a hiss precedes the faint glow that washes over the walls, the frames of the pictures Levi is observing casting shadows that move with the flickering of candlelight. He hears Eren blow, and then another match brings a flame to life, and then another, and another. The room is now bathed softly in warm, flickering light, and it’s enough to make out the details of the many works of art that surround him. Eren’s own, every one of them.

Eren comes to stand beside his Captain, kissing his cheek and wrapping an arm around his waist. Eren guides Levi to each of his favorites, explaining them one by one, and many are images of Levi’s own memories, things they saw together, both bitter and sweet. This, your face when you came to save me from Kenny. And here, this one, our first kiss. The trial, the pain in your eyes. The ride into the Forest of _Big-Ass Trees_ , wings of freedom on your back and your eyes on me. Eren comes to rest in front of a certain charcoal sketch, two shadowy figures in motion. He looks to Levi, green eyes burning gold in the candlelight, and he speaks so softly with fondness in his voice.

“Do you remember how to do this?”

It takes Levi a moment to understand. Eren gives Levi the little push he needs for the memories to come flooding back to sweep him away with their force.

A small arm lowers, a needle settles into a groove, and with the first strains of music brought forth by the motion of needle within groove, he remembers.

Eren is standing in front of him, his hand extended in invitation. And just like in those days, he bows, takes that hand larger than his own and pulls his lover’s body close. They begin to move, Levi leading, one arm guiding the other into an embrace, the other bent to hold Eren’s hand at his shoulder, while Eren’s wraps itself lovingly around Levi’s neck and across his broad shoulders. They sway in time with the music, only a few steps faltering before falling into perfect, elegant rhythm together.

Levi’s head snaps up from its resting place on the brunet’s shoulder, and Eren’s green eyes meet shocked grey with a smile.

“Is this…?”

“You remember?”

A song they danced to a lifetime ago.

“Our song.”

“Mmm hmm. Do you know how hard it was to find a recording of this? No one had ever heard of it. I looked for it forever.”

Levi buries his face against Eren’s neck to hide his misty eyes. _Eren_ is supposed to be the sentimental one. _What’s happening to me?_

“It’s the only record I have. I used to listen to this over and over,” and Eren does not miss a single step as he continues to whisper to Levi. “It’s not exactly the same as they used to play it, but it’s close enough. It reminded me so much of you, and I’d close my eyes and imagine us dancing again. How you’d dress up just like this, and I’d come to your room after everyone was asleep, and the way you looked in the candlelight when you held out your hand for me to take, and how just for a little while we could pretend not to be soldiers.”

And Levi _does_ remember, and he does not like the way his vision blurs as he does, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself right now, and so he does what he always did when they danced before.

He kisses him.

He kisses him and soon they cease their movements, the dancing of their bodies abandoned in lieu of the equally enjoyable dancing of their tongues. The song reaches its crescendo and Levi’s jacket is being pushed down his shoulders by firm, insistent hands. It is haphazardly tossed aside and he could not care less since he’s being pulled forward by his cravat, lips once more meeting Eren’s. Their breaths are heavy, racing hearts beating in their own signature so beautifully out of step with their song.

Eren is shirking off his own jacket, Levi using the opportunity to loosen his cravat with his fingers, tugging at the cloth until it hangs loose around his neck. Again their lips are together, nipping, pulling, tongues teasing and retreating, Eren’s face pulled closer by Levi’s hands, Eren’s hands seeking the buttons of Levi’s shirt, and only three are undone when he decides instead to tug at its sides, pulling it free from the waistband underneath which it was tucked. His hands brush Levi’s skin when he does this and Levi curses the moment they leave it. He’s been patient for centuries. He’s done being patient.

Buttons scatter, and hands press against Eren, and the bed in the corner is forgotten when they’ve slid to the floor with Levi on top. They devour one another and the wet sucking of lips and tongues becomes the perfect accompaniment to the song still floating through the air around them.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because precious and fragile things need special handling. 
> 
> Things get damaged, things get broken. I thought we'd manage, but words left unspoken... I'M SORRY, I CAN'T HELP MYSELF


	10. Now it's my responsibility.

 

  
  
  
_“That’s all? You delayed your report for this? And what, exactly, is your reason for keeping me waiting?”_

_"We had to be certain.”_

_"Hm. I see. Well, this_ is _a special case, so I can understand your reasoning. I'll let it slide this time. Don't let it happen again. You're on thin ice as it is."_

_"Yes, I am aware of that. I thank you for your understanding, Commander Zackley."_

  

——

 

Levi feels himself being tugged into consciousness, his body sensing movement. He jolts awake, eyes snapping open, mind and body on full alert and primed for a fight. It’s just one of many instincts that remained even after death and it is as natural to him as breathing. His senses are heightened even more than usual and he scans the room, ears perked, listening for breaths, footsteps, whispers, anything that might signal to him the source of his intuition's warning, for any signs of danger inside of the room or beyond the door, calculating every possible scenario and strategy of defense, preparing for the impending battle.

His disoriented, sleep-fogged mind rights itself. He slowly absorbs the unfamiliar surroundings, recognition not fully dawning until his eyes, always as sharp as a cat's in the darkness of any room, finally settle on something that is familiar and bears not a trace of threat. To him, at least.

Eren.

He relaxes, the tension of his rigid, anticipating muscles unwinding as the surge of adrenaline ebbs. Eren is there beside him, sleeping soundly, safely tucked into his own warm, soft bed, secure within the walls of a home whose foundation has never quaked nor crumbled from the earth-shaking march of advancing giants. The brunet gives a soft snore and a mumble, those sounds proceeding a smacking of his lips, which are dry and sticky with the breath of sleep. It appears as if he is about to wake. He stirs, his body rolls over under the covers instinctively seeking the warmth of the one beside him. After this he settles, eyelids fluttering though never raising, and Levi watches Eren nuzzle against him, his lover still in the gentle arms of sleep.

Levi lays back down into the softness of the bed. It is comfortable and warm, and he is safe, surrounded by the scent of Eren on the sheets. He inhales deeply as he closes his eyes again, arm now draped over Eren, fingers toying with his messy brown hair, and notices something different in that smell that is so familiar. His mind drifts backward to thoughts of his bed, where the first Eren often lie beside him there in exactly the same way, and it dawns on him. The difference he perceived. It is not just Eren’s scent in the sheets; it is his as well. It smells like them.

His mind wanders as he joins Eren in sleep's embrace and it provides him with another memory. The events of the previous night dance behind his eyelids and he replays them over and over, savoring every detail, etching it into his mind until it is embedded in it with the rest of his memories. He hopes that this one will last beyond this life like the others which are so very tenacious, so very painful. He hopes that these new memories will force out the old.

Even among the happiest memories of the old life, few can compare to the joy of this new one.

The evening didn’t end in intercourse. He won’t lie to himself and say that he wasn’t hoping to finally consummate their bond, but he also can’t say that he was dissatisfied with the night’s events, either. No, he is not dissatisfied in the least. Embarrassed, perhaps, but definitely not dissatisfied. He couldn’t help it, though, not when he felt Eren’s hand on him for the first time since they were united after being parted for so long by death and the cruel hands of time. How could he have been expected to last when Eren took them both in his firm and feverish hand and pleasured them both in unison? Eren was no different, and the fruit of his labor was so profound that he was too spent to even consider pulling another stunt like last time.

Despite the protests he voiced after said stunt, he secretly concedes that he wouldn’t have been _entirely_ opposed. It was not exactly the most pleasant experience, yet in another sense, it was. It was intimate in a way that few things are and few things have ever been, and a shuddering wave of heat rolls through him at the memory. The taste of himself and the taste of Eren, thick and bitter on his tongue, how it clung to it, and to his cheeks and down the length of his throat until it settled heavily in his gut. How Eren desired to combine them in that manner, to taste and to swallow, to generously feed him from his own mouth so that they both would contain within them their inseparable essence. The sheer intimacy of that crude and unexpected act far outweighs the unpleasantness and though he won't ask for it again, he may not necessarily shy away if it was offered a second time. But Eren doesn’t need to know that.

Sleep succeeds in pulling him into its undertow and his mind settles on one final thought before he is carried away into its depths:

There is no longer anything in this world that is of any importance at all to him. The horrors of the past are gone. He fears not, wants not, needs not, he will desire for naught but one thing. He has everything he needs now. Nothing else will ever matter as long as he can be with Eren.

Waking up beside him is more than enough.

 

——

 

Eren stands in the kitchen where the day's first meal is slowly coming together, his feet as bare as his torso, his hair akin to the bird's nest visible in the tree outside the window. He is slow in gathering the various ingredients from the cupboards and he does not notice when Levi enters the room.

He is immersed in his own thoughts, his practiced hands working automatically in the preparation of dishes he's prepared a thousand times before. He recalls the previous evening and the wonder of it all, but his contentment is eroded by a nagging in the back of his mind. He wonders why certain things didn't occur, and reasons to himself that perhaps it is hesitation on Levi's part as a result of a particular unpleasant memory. Neither of them enjoyed that first time. It was rushed, it was painful, it bore as much fear and panic as it did love, and it was suddenly vital to both of them for reasons they never imagined it would be until the threat of imminent death compelled them.

But that should have been the end of it. Levi made it up to him a hundred times over after he returned alive from the perilous mission that inspired the urgency of that first joining. After that, Levi never hesitated. Eren rarely had to be the one to seek Levi when it was himself who was wanting, and Levi never turned him down. So why now? The mood was set, there was no lack of desire, and there was no threat of interruption. Why didn't Levi take him then? He tries to dismiss the insecurity that is beginning to eat away at him, but he is uncomfortably aware that his body is not the same as the one that Levi first loved. Does Levi find him inadequate now? Does the fact that _he_ is the one who now wears the multitude of scars on his skin put him off? Is the sight of them repulsive, or is it that they remind him of the ones that marked his body, ones he hated, and along with them the painful memories of how he came to wear his stripes? Or is it that...

Levi can sense that something is bothering Eren. He is so preoccupied with whatever that something is that he didn't even notice him sitting down at the kitchen table. He did not even do so silently, as the sound of his chair being pulled to the table preceded the clanking of his teacup on its saucer after the sound of him none-too-quietly slurping and spitting the hot liquid when it threatened to burn his tongue.

"Oi."

Eren's posture straightens when his mind registers that Levi's familiar way of getting his attention is happening _here_ , not there. It's been a regular occurrence for him to hear that same command ringing in his ears at any given time, on any given day, and after the torment of it happening with such frequency with no plausible explanation, he eventually just accepted that he was hearing voices that weren't there... Except they were there, once. For this reason he didn't respond to the sound of Levi's voice until he noticed, with some delay out of the habit of dismissing it as a voice only he could hear, that it was louder than usual and was actually echoing around him in the kitchen instead of solely inside of his skull.

"Oh, hey. I made you tea."

"I noticed." _Thanks for trying to melt my tongue off, brat. What do you have against my tongue? It does so much for you and this is how you repay it?_

After Eren finally confessed his love and Levi took him as his partner and lover, Eren always saw to making his tea. Levi was very particular about tea, more than anyone he had ever encountered, so he practiced constantly until he had perfected his method. When Levi insisted that Eren be the only one to make it from then on, Eren thanked him by crushing his ribs and swinging him around like a rag doll. He never told Eren, but the way that he made his tea was better than he had ever made it himself. When Eren died, he wondered why he never told him that, and so it took its place with all the others atop the endless pile regrets Levi collected after the death of his only love. Regrets for things he never did, things he never said, wishes of Eren's and of his own that he never granted even though he could have, easily.

He can't erase those regrets, but he can try to make up for them.

"It's good."

"Really?" Eren turns away from the counter where he's chopping something that Levi can only smell, and he's trying to place the aroma but abandons the effort once he sees the joyful look on the brunet's face.

"Yes, really. I think you're the only one in these god-forsaken walls who actually knows how to make tea."

"Wha... _R-really_? Are you teasing me?" Eren looks so confused and so very, very cute.

"You always were the best at making tea. Even better than me." There's one weight off his conscience. That feels... Good.  He'd been living so completely crushed beneath his innumerable regrets that he'd forgotten just how heavy each one was.

"I never knew you thought that. I just thought you were humoring me because I didn't want anyone else to make it for you."

"I never told you. I also never told you how much I love it when you get jealous over me." Check another one off the list.

"You were _mine_. _Are_ mine. I'm the only one who's allowed to touch your precious tea leaves...and other things."

"I could have made it myself."

"Well fine, then. You can make it yourself from now on." Eren sticks his tongue out at Levi and indignantly turns back to what he was chopping on the counter behind him.

"Little shit." He _could_ make it himself. It's just that... Eren never thought twice about being the one to do it, even now. He thinks about how Eren _wanted_ to make it, practically begged him to let him do it at first. And how Eren always cooked for him, and made sure everything around him was spotless when he wasn't there to do it himself, and sometimes even when he was. How Eren cut his hair for him, and rubbed his feet for him, and read his reports to him when he was too tired to open his eyes, and now how he's still doing those things and more. What has he even done for Eren? The relief of those wrongs he'd just righted is short-lived; guilt fills the gaps they left.  He pushes himself away from the table.

"Hey... Eren." Levi stands behind Eren and cautiously wraps his arms around the boy's waist, very aware of the fact that he has both a knife in his hand and a sharp attitude to match.

"You're in the way, I'm trying to make you breakfast."

"Show me how."

Eren sets his knife down on the cutting board, his hands finding each of Levi's disruptive but welcome arms, peeling them away from himself so he can turn to look at the shorter man's face. He looks serious. "You... want me to teach you how to cook?" Eren questions, disbelieving.

"Will you?"

Eren's body is still, though his heart is incredibly moved by Levi's pleading, sincere eyes. His Captain wants him... to _teach_ him? This can't be real. It can't be. "Yeah... of course. Of course I will."

And so they stand side-by-side at the kitchen counter in Eren's spacious home, knives in hand, with Eren guiding his Captain and his Captain following his every word, their hips and shoulders _accidentally_ brushing together at every given chance.

Or they would be, if Levi was standing on the step-stool that Eren doesn't dare retrieve from the pantry. He just got this life, he's not ready to lose it just yet.

 

\----

 

"Are you sure the corpses are buried in there? Have you checked under the floorboards? I would have smelled them by now, I think you should try the flowerbed."

Eren's mattress is so soft that the edge of it sinks under the weight of Levi sitting on it while he watches Eren dig in his closet for god knows what. It looks like a titan's been through there.

"Just hang on! I know it's in here somewhere. Give me another minute."  _Thud, thud, crash. Sounds like it broke that time._

"I could give you stable duty for a year for making a mess like that."

Eren abandons his search to make eyes at Levi, something in the closet falling over with another loud crash followed by the sound of a small avalanche of _somethings_ which clink when they hit the floor one by one. "Oh, _please_ , Captain Levi, _please_ don't make me clean up after Jean! I'll clean it up later, I promise! Anything but stable duty!"

"Tch. Fine." Levi sounds annoyed, but it's mostly at himself for his eternal inability to resist Eren's exaggerated pout and big green eyes when they're begging him like that, even if he _is_ just horsing around.

"Thank you, Captain, thank you! You'll see, I'll clean it all up and you can supervise me the whole time to make sure I'm doing it right _._ If I don't do a good job you can send me down to the dungeon and chain me to the bed to punish me, make me sleep by myself and think about what a _bad boy_ I've been."

Levi rolls his eyes. Eren is already spelunking in the treacherous, cavernous depths again, his muffled giggles bouncing off the back wall of the closet.

"Here you are!" Eren seems to be talking to someone in the closet while he yanks a large bag out from under a pile of canvases and tosses it behind his back toward Levi's general direction. "Can you grab this bag and put that stack of books that's on the dresser in it?"

He goes back to mining coal or whatever the hell it is he's doing in there.

"Is that an order, _sir?_ " Levi mocks.

"Oh, I'm giving the orders now? In that case..."

Levi throws a pillow that hits Eren squarely on the ass, surprising him and causing him to bump his head on the closet shelf he's been bent beneath, shuffling around things that are on the floor looking for whatever it is he's been tearing apart the room to find.

"Ow! What the fuck!"

The thunk of Eren's head hitting the wood and his subsequent yelp is really _quite_ comical, and the room is soon filled with the musical laughter of reunited souls.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eren, hurry up. Levi is waiting for you to come out of the closet.


	11. Big-ass Trees

  
  
_“Please forgive me.”_

 

——

 

The air is thick with the scent of the emerging season, softly perfumed by the warmth that coaxes the scent from blooming flowers and the gentle breeze that carries hints of another familiar scent, one which Levi recognizes: the source of it is walking right beside him. They have walked these woods together in comfortable silence, Levi knowing not and caring not where he’s being taken, completely content with enjoying the company of his lover, who leads them to their final destination with a spring in his step and a song in his throat. Levi doesn’t dare interrupt the music filling both his ears and his heart with its beauty; a melody sung by a chorus of birds on wing and branch, layered with a harmony even more beautiful than their love-song. More beautiful because it is hummed by a sweet songbird who once sung to a crow. The songbird and the crow have lost their wings, but without them they now fly higher and freer than they ever did with wings upon their backs.

Soon another voice joins the chorus of nature, and it grows louder and clearer until its bubbling vibrato can clearly be heard among the others. A river comes into view as they approach the bottom of the hill, and Eren takes off running to reach it the minute he sees it. Levi is left by himself to close the distance between them, chuckling to himself at Eren’s obvious excitement, smiling when the backpack that was slung over his shoulder is dropped carelessly onto the grass before he turns back around to face Levi, who is apparently taking far too long to reach the bottom of the hill, and motions hurriedly with his hand to encourage him to hurry up and join him.

Levi’s pace is relaxed and leisurely while he makes his way to where Eren impatiently waits for him, choosing instead not to rush as Eren seems to want him to, but to thoroughly take in the idyllic scene before him. The tea shade of swiftly flowing water, the vibrant green of the lush grass that is soft beneath his feet and of the foliage of the dense forest that surrounds this secret place like a protective wall, the image of Eren illuminated in the sunlight that filters through the canopy of leaves, eyes and lips both smiling while he waits for him to arrive, to return to his side, just as he always did.

He’s met with a kiss, a large hand in his hair before he can even begin to protest, Eren pulling him forward by the back of his head to join his lips with the ones he has been waiting so long to kiss. The minute of separation might as well have been an hour for all the eagerness with which he crashes his lips onto Levi’s.

Those warm, welcoming lips linger, Levi feeling them curve against his with barely-contained joy, but the next instant they’re gone, that moment of joyful affection brought to an end, and Eren’s face disappears from view. With confusion Levi blinks, the suddenness of the change momentarily stunning him until he sees that Eren has simply dropped to the ground at his feet, kneeling, reaching into the bag that he had dropped earlier and retrieving several things from inside of it, setting them down before yanking at Levi’s pant leg to get him to sit.

“This is what I wanted to show you,” Eren says, excitement in his voice. “Isn’t it beautiful? No one knows about this place, so I come here on nice days to be alone,” he pauses, placing a stack of objects onto Levi’s lap, “to paint.”

Levi stares down at what Eren has handed him. It’s a thick sketchbook, on top of which Eren has stacked several flat tins that are dented, speckled and smeared with paint and ink, worn and well-loved. Eren has gathered his own stack of supplies, his consisting of a blank canvas and a thick book of papers similar to the one he gave Levi, and some more small boxes that are equally splattered and smudged with color.

“I paint my memories. At least the ones I want to remember. I must have painted and drawn all of them by now, but…” He smiles at Levi. “I have something new to remember.” Levi only looks at Eren’s face, eyes searching each of his features for the words he can’t seem to find, hoping to see something there to remind him how to speak. He can’t, so Eren does it for him. “Levi… Can I paint you?”  
  
Still at a loss for words at this completely new situation, he simply nods, and Eren smiles again, even bigger than before. Levi’s heart clenches at seeing it, a sense of joy welling within him from the newness of this all, at how unexpected it is, how it’s something he had never even imagined.

 

——

 

It is well into the afternoon and their hands are stained, and for Eren, a cheek is dirtied as well. It’s been quiet. Peaceful. New. Levi with his own paper in his lap, damp with the watercolor paint he’s never even dreamed he'd be learning to use, Eren with his propped-up canvas that he’s been squinting and frowning and smiling at for hours in between thoughtful sideways glances at the man quietly painting beside him.  
  
The canvas has been hidden from view the entire time, Eren determined to keep his work a secret until it’s finished. All Levi has seen is the palette, and the darkness of the colors that Eren carries to the canvas on the ends of worn brushes. He looks down at his own creation, which is nothing but a large sheet washed in dappled, dreamy color that takes no particular shape. Though, now that he’s really looking at the abstract swaths of color that formed on the page solely by instinct and feeling, it seems to resemble wings. It wasn’t the picture that he cared about. He wouldn’t know how to paint anything that looked like a real person or place anyway. What mattered to him was the color, which he spent ages meticulously mixing and layering and adjusting until it felt right.  
  
“Want to see it?”  
  
Levi is startled by the sudden interruption of the comfortable silence he’s been sharing with Eren here in this little corner of heaven. He realizes then that he hasn’t heard Eren’s voice since he was explaining to him how to use the paints that he chose from the selection of tins that Eren had given him. Judging by the position of the sun, that was hours ago. His brushes are placed carefully back into the tin of watercolor paints, the tin snapped closed and set aside on the grass with his own painting.  
  
Eren doesn’t bother waiting for Levi to say yes because he’s going to show it to him anyway. And he does, at last turning the canvas around to reveal its secret.  
  
Levi gasps.  
  
The heavy storm clouds of black and grey that swirled across the surface of the palette were not the dark omens they appeared to be. There _was_ darkness on the canvas, but not the darkness of oncoming storms and heavy skies. The darkness on the canvas is _him_.  
  
Raven hair and slate grey eyes, pale skin softly aglow in warm light. The black, a suit. The red, not blood, but wine. All these pieces put together form the picture of a man that is far too beautiful to be the one it’s meant to resemble. At least that’s what Levi thinks when he sees himself frozen in time on the canvas where Eren has recreated him as seen through his eyes.  
  
It’s incredible, and again he is lost for words. Somehow he doesn’t want Eren to see what he’s painted while he was busy crafting a masterpiece. Levi’s wet paper with its rudimentary pools of color is stealthily pushed aside and further out of view, hidden behind the backpack that’s still half-full of paper and paint and pencils. He hopes Eren won’t ask to see it.  
  
Eren’s name is all Levi can manage, and it’s barely even a whisper. The look of awe on his face and the sound of it in his raspy voice are answer enough for Eren. Levi’s more beautiful doppelgänger is set aside, abandoned in favor of the man in the flesh, both of them now flat on the ground, but only one of them receiving the privilege of Eren’s lips upon their own.  
  
It doesn’t take long for the kiss to deepen, Eren’s tongue politely requesting entrance, which Levi gladly permits. His stained hand rises to cup Eren’s jaw, thumb firmly stroking his cheek, and Levi knows that the kiss is enough to hide his thumb’s ulterior motive. Eren doesn’t think twice about Levi’s hand falling away from his face, and he doesn’t notice how Levi wipes his hand on the grass to clean off the smudge of black paint.

 

——

 

The ground has begun to chill, and the river’s softly babbling water is starting to darken with the first hints of the sun’s descent, the air drifting across its rippled surface carrying with it a dampness that coats each blade of grass in the lightest glaze of early evening dew. Only one small patch of earth has not succumbed to the cool of the dying afternoon, and the grass that tickles slivers of exposed skin is as warm and dry as if it were midday, though the bodies that crush it beneath them are even warmer.  
  
The lovers on the grass couldn’t bear to tear themselves away from the serenity of this hidden-away place, the sense of security that settled over them too precious to abandon. It is a truly peaceful place. Beautiful. Dreamlike. The awe-inspiring landscape of it, with its soft grass and its clean water, where they lie with no weapons at their hips, exposed and fearless because there is no enemy to be fought here. It’s a place where they need not stake their lives on horses and wires to deliver them out of the countless snapping jaws from which very few ever escaped, no matter how trained they were in doing so. Here the earth is damp with dew instead of blood, and the shrill cries are those of starlings and thrushes flying freely in the sky above, not those of the terrified, doomed men that Humanity’s Strongest had led straight to their deaths. Men who had trusted him without question. Men who he had failed and who had died before his very eyes.  
  
This is the world that all those men, and that they themselves dreamed of since the day they were born. The world they constantly longed for, and fought for, and bled for, and sacrificed everything they had for in hopes of someday seeing it for themselves, and they died without ever getting a single glimpse of it.  
  
It was only _after_ they died that they were finally able to taste that dream, just as they are doing now, except… It’s not the landscape they are enjoying or the dream they are tasting.  
  
It’s each other.  
  
That one kiss wasn’t enough. Two, three, four; still inadequate. The warmth of the afternoon sun on his back, the sensual slide of Levi’s tongue against his own, and the rich scent of earth and grass under his hand were so different than anything he’s felt in this new life that he can’t seem get his fill of them. His dreams are vivid, to be sure, but now Eren realizes exactly how dull and hollow memories really are. It’s apparent that Levi feels the same, as he has not allowed Eren to part from him any father than what’s necessary to catch a breath, greedily pulling Eren's lips back onto his own when he’s decided that Eren’s had enough time to fill his lungs.  
  
Eren is no longer content to lie beside Levi while he kisses him. That’s _far_ too much distance and something must be done to correct this grievous oversight, so he rolls over onto his hip, supporting his shifting weight with one hand, cupping the other over the side of Levi’s face, never breaking the kiss as he throws a leg across Levi's hip, draping himself over his lover’s small frame. Levi gasps in response, startled by Eren’s boldness, and his gasp is echoed by Eren, who freezes in place above Levi, equally shocked. He plants his hands beside Levi’s shoulders, pushing himself up, parting their bodies, and the distance between them allows Eren to stare, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, down at the surprised look on Levi’s flushed face, his swollen lips and dark hair splayed out on the grass a sight so alluring that his mouth goes dry and his heart thumps upon seeing it. As incredible as it is seeing Levi laid out and panting beneath him, that was not his intention when he pulled back to look at him.  
  
“ _Levi,_ ” he breathes, nearly quiet enough to be drowned out by the babbling river, “… are you _hard?_ ”  
  
Levi has never been shy, but Eren thinks he sees the flush on Levi’s skin deepen when he asks, and he _definitely_ sees how Levi’s darkened eyes look away from his. Levi quickly looks back, surprised by his own uncharacteristic response, further realizing his error by the smirk that has settled onto Eren’s lips. Determined to redeem himself, Levi steels his features, locking eyes with Eren and never once blinking when he yanks on Eren’s wrist, forcefully pressing the captured hand over his groin as the answer to Eren’s obvious question, furrowing his brow as if to say, _Are you an idiot? You’ve been relentlessly fucking my mouth with your tongue, of course I’m fucking hard._  
  
Eren descends upon him in an instant, taking his mouth with fervor, leaving his hand exactly where Levi had placed it, palming the hardness beneath it, pressing, squeezing, gasping, panting, swallowing every moan he forces out of Levi with his touch. It still isn’t enough. He pulls away.  
  
Even more desperate sounding than before, he gasps out words in hot breath that fans over Levi’s lips. “Levi… I want to use my mouth.”  
  
Levi stiffens and the world blurs, Eren’s words ringing in his ears.

 

——

 

 _The fingers trailing up and down his neck are gentle, but the hungry lips nipping and biting and sucking at him are nothing of the sort. The pounding of his heart is loud in his ears, though it’s really not as deafening as it seems, as he can clearly hear the frenzied thumping of another heart over that of his own. His mind is blank and his body is hot, and his quick, shallow breaths are not nearly enough to fill his starving lungs._  
  
_“Levi.” The word breathed into his mouth sounds like his name. “I want to use my mouth.”_  
  
_His galloping heart stops._  
  
_“Please, Levi, can I?” His voice is affectionate and earnest, his eyes soft, his touch as gentle as ever. No words come from his parted lips, and, for a long moment, he appears uncertain as he scans Levi’s face for an answer. Green eyes settle again to gaze warmly into grey, lips twitching as if to speak but hesitating, nothing but breath passing them until the words finally come. “I love you, Levi.”_  
  
_Eren's words are cannon fire. Levi is the target, and the scant air in his lungs is forced out of him by the crushing force of its blow._

——

 

“… Can I?”  
  
  
Levi feels as if he’s underwater. The voice he hears is distant and garbled, the familiar face that’s nuzzling its nose against his clothed erection is wavy and distorted when it looks up at him. He blinks in confusion at the overlapping images, two sets of the same green eyes filled with warmth, expectant, waiting. Eren is waiting. The present returns to focus, though the past still lingers at the edge of his consciousness.  
  
He hesitates. _Here?_ _Outside?_ Eren kisses his belly. His body throbs.  
  
“… yeah _,_ ” he swallows, voice as soft and breathy as Eren’s. “Yeah.”  
  
Eren wastes no time. Levi’s zipper is down in less than a second, and insistent hands are tugging at his pants soon after. Levi raises his hips to assist Eren in shimmying them down just enough to expose the dark spot that his aching cock has created on the front of his shorts, _still Eren’s actually_ , the wetness evidence of Eren’s prolonged teasing. His skin is greeted with the coolness of outdoor air as his erection is freed, the string of clear fluid connected to the fabric snapping as it’s pulled away. His heart pounds painfully in his ribcage when he sees how Eren is looking at him. The eyes that were fixed on his own are now directed to a spot lower on his body, the hunger in them so intense that it makes him shiver.  
  
They look back, though, and there’s one last moment of hesitation that ends with a nod and a bitten lip.  
  
Eren’s eyes are still looking into his while his thumb nervously ghosts over the coarse hair that’s so close to the part of him that he’s dying for Eren to touch. The gentle action continues even as the chill on his skin disappears from Eren’s burning fingers finally wrapping around him. Levi closes his eyes with a groan, back arching involuntarily at the incredible sensation of Eren’s firm grasp on him, and when his eyes open again, Eren is no longer looking at his face.  
  
Eren savors this moment, committing it to memory. He wants to remember seeing his hand slowly moving up Levi’s _incredibly_ beautiful cock, and the way Levi’s abdomen tenses when he does it. He wants to remember seeing the head of Levi’s cock gradually being revealed, pink and dripping, as he eases his foreskin back with a slow, downward stroke until it’s completely exposed. Most of all, he wants to remember the exact moment his tongue touches that smooth, slick head and the taste of him covers his tongue just before he closes his mouth around it and takes it as deep as he can into his throat.  
  
He’s never going to forget the way Levi moans when he does just that.

 

——

 

Levi bites down on the side of his hand in an attempt to muffle the sounds he’s making while Eren pleasures him with his mouth for the _second_ first time. He’s never been able to control the moans that Eren forces out of him, nor has he ever tried to. Even though they’re hidden away in this secret clearing in the heart of a dense forest, for some reason he finds himself not wanting his voice to be heard, even if there is no one here but Eren to hear it. And Eren _loves_ hearing it. Eren doesn’t protest, though. He just squeezes his hand reassuringly when he notices him bring his hand up to his mouth. Eren still makes noise, but it seems like he’s actually trying to keep his voice down, too.

 

——

 

“Hey. Hey, guys, come take a look at this.”

"What am I... Oh holy shit!"

“Keep it down!”  
  
“That's fucking disgusting! I'm gonna puke!”

"I said shut the fuck up!"

 

 


	12. Titans aren't our only enemies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains slurs and violent homophobia.

 

_"I couldn't do it alone."_

 

\----

  
The fingers running through Eren’s hair have never forgotten the feeling of its softness. They have longed to feel that sensation just one more time, to tangle themselves in it and feel the shiver that always shook Eren’s body every time they did. Levi’s hand cards through it affectionately, and it only ceases its petting to slide down and caress a concave cheek, to cup a stretched jaw in his palm, to stroke that face with his thumb and feel the eternal softness of Eren’s skin while he revels in the softness of Eren’s mouth on him. It’s all too much. The pleasure of it is overwhelming and his voice escapes despite his best efforts to restrain it.  
  
It’s only a heavy panting at first, but then Eren tugs at his foreskin with his lips, sucking it into his mouth and teasing with his tongue, and his panting gives way to a keening moan that Eren mirrors when his mouth is again filled with Levi’s cock, Levi whimpering at the humming vibration. A hand now accompanies lips and tongue, it soon becoming wet with saliva as it strokes and fondles him. Levi’s back arches involuntarily, forcing himself deeper into the hot, tight wetness of Eren’s mouth, and he has barely enough presence of mind to lower his hips to avoid choking Eren by pushing it deeper.  
  
“Ah… Ah, _Eren_ …” Levi moans, his fingers returning to Eren’s hair, gently tightening around a handful of wild strands, uttering breathless words with great difficulty in between gasps. “You’re so good, your mouth feels so good. _Ah!_ ”  
  
Levi’s praise is rewarded with another moan, Eren’s body shuddering when he hears the words. There’s nothing Levi can do right now but return the favor, every word he says genuine and sincere. “My perfect little beast, I don’t deserve anything as beautiful as you. Don’t stop, _please, don’t stop._ I want to feel your perfect mouth on me forever.” Levi knows he’s succeeded when the shivers and moans come louder and quicker, increasing in intensity with every word he says. And he senses something else through his clouded perception- a subtle shift in Eren’s position, the warmth of Eren's hand leaving him, and he knows that Eren has brought it down between his legs to palm himself over his clothes.  
  
They’re feeding off of each other’s pleasure, every sound echoed by the other, heightening each other’s desire until Levi feels the beginnings of a sweet pressure building within him. He feels the tension spreading through his abdomen, muscles tightening in anticipation, shoulders pressed into damp earth, hips lifting up to meet Eren’s mouth, which accepts him gladly. Eren’s lips slide down even more than before, tighter, faster, always knowing when Levi’s getting close and willingly taking Levi deeper into him until Levi can feel himself being swallowed into a moaning throat.  
  
The sounds of rushing water and rustling leaves now fall on deaf ears, overtaken by the song reaching its crescendo on the grassy shore.

 

——

 

“Gross. We should turn them in for this,” the smallest boy whispers, punctuating the end of his statement by taking a swig from the glass bottle in his hand.  
  
“You think I’m a fucking snitch?” Another finishes his own beer, carelessly tossing the bottle aside. “Besides, what’s the fun in that? They’ll probably be gone by the time the cops get here, anyway. Why don’t we just do them a favor and handle it ourselves?”  
  
“You know what? You’re right. We can’t have them spreading their disease all over _our_ city. I think it’s our duty to protect the innocent, don’t you agree?”  
  
Each boy gleefully grins in agreement, chugging what’s left of their beers in preparation to stop the horrible crime being committed in their safe and beautiful community. Seeing the others tossing their bottles to the ground seems to give one of them an idea, and he bends down to reach for the one he’d discarded earlier. He stares at it for a moment, the others looking at him in confusion until they see him grin even wider, and then realization dawns on them all at the same time.  
  
The lovers on the shore are too far away to hear the sound of glass breaking.

 

——

 

Several pairs of feet trek carefully through the woods in an attempt to not alarm the perpetrators and allow them to escape before they can be brought to justice. They’re not as stealthy as they think they are, but it doesn’t seem to matter since the crunching leaves and excited whispers remain completely unnoticed despite how much closer they are to their targets.  
  
“Holy shit.” One of them stops short, squinting through the trees to make sure he’s really seeing what he thinks he is. “I can’t believe my eyes.”  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“How many times do I have to tell you to keep your _fucking_ voice down!”  
  
“ _What is it?_ ” He repeats in a whisper, standing beside the other to try to make out what exactly it is that he can’t believe he’s seeing.  
  
“I knew he looked familiar. I fucking _knew_ it!”  
  
“Just tell us who the fuck it is already!”  
  
“Come see for yourself.”  
  
“Oh my god. It’s him, isn’t it. It’s totally him!”  
  
“I knew there was something else wrong with him. He’s insane and he’s a filthy cock-sucking faggot? We’ll be doing everyone a favor.”  
  
“Let’s do this!”

 

——

 

Levi is writhing in ecstasy beneath Eren, whining and holding his breath as he tries to hold back his climax, not wanting this to end just yet, but the sloppy wet sounds and muffled cries coming from Eren are making that feat nearly impossible. He looks down at Eren and sees that his eyes are scrunched tightly shut in concentration, he sees the pink of his cheeks and hears the heavy inhale and exhale of breath from his nostrils. He was right about where Eren’s hand had gone when he sees his arm wedged beneath him, hips barely rocking. The sight is too much for him to take, though it remains in his mind even after he tosses his head back and closes his eyes to block it out. There’s no way he’d last even a few seconds longer if he kept watching his cock sliding in and out of Eren’s mouth like that. In fact, just thinking about it is threatening to make him spend sooner than he wants to.  
  
Neither he nor Eren hear the snapping twigs or the footsteps closing in on them, so absorbed in each other that the world around them has fallen out of existence.

That is, until Levi’s body goes completely stiff, not from orgasm, but from the sudden voice that sounds like it’s coming from right beside them. His heart drops into his stomach when his eyes snap open, blood becoming ice in his veins at what he sees. He loses his breath for what seems like an eternity, completely paralyzed by the shock of realizing that he and Eren are no longer alone. They're surrounded.  
  
Levi gasps a curse, bucking the still-unaware Eren off of him. Eren rolls over, landing on his ass, mouth open and ready to vocalize his displeasure, the idea immediately forgotten when he realizes _why_ his mouth is suddenly empty. He doesn’t close his empty mouth, though. His jaw remains slack, but this time it's out of shock, and he's just as frozen by it as Levi is.  
  
“Well, well. Look who it is. I can't believe my luck, two for the price of one!”  
  
The lovers are still locked in place, gaping in disbelief at the situation at hand. Levi can’t comprehend how this could have happened. He’s never failed to pick up on danger far before it became a threat. Eren, he can understand. But not him. Not with his senses. The movement of the large boy crossing his arms draws Levi back to reality and he hastily scoots back, putting a pointless amount of distance between himself and the boy, his useless, numb fingers grasping at his thighs in a frantic attempt to pull up his pants.  
  
“Look at this disgusting little midget. I bet you’re out here because the only way you can get someone to suck your dick is to pay them to, right? Is he your whore? Couldn’t even get a woman to do it, huh?”  
  
Levi glares at him in defiance, having no intention of gracing him with a reply. The boy turns back to Eren, Levi watching him too closely to notice the subtle tremor that makes Eren clench his hands into fists beside him.  
  
“So you’re not just batshit crazy, you’re a dirty faggot whore, too? I knew I should have finished you off back then. You filthy fucking abominations are the ones to blame for all this shit,” the boy extends his arm, gesturing vaguely before spitting at Eren’s feet. “You make me sick. You’re not even human, you’re a fucking animal is what you are.”

 

——

 

 _Why are they looking at me like that? It’s as if they’re looking at a monster._  
  
_“What are you? Human, or titan?”_

 

——

 

Eren hasn’t said a word this entire time. Levi hasn’t even noticed his completely uncharacteristic behavior, nor the glazed-over look in his eyes while insult after insult are hurled at him.  
  
The boy takes a single step forward. The reaction is instantaneous.  
  
It only takes a split second for Levi to look over, but by then Eren’s hand is already in his mouth, his teeth forming deep crescents in the skin. He bites harder and harder, ferociously tearing at his own flesh, only a little more and he’ll draw blood. Only a little more and the steam will clear and there won’t be anyone here but he and Levi again.  
  
It all happens in slow motion. The arm swinging. The broken bottle that he hadn’t seen. The jagged glass flying out of the boy’s hand, catching Eren on the side of his head. The blood.

 

——

 

 _The blade is already in motion. He’s so close. He should have been watching Eren. He shouldn’t have let him out of his sight. So close._  
  
_Not close enough to feel the spray of red on his skin._  
  
_Not close enough to save him._

 

——

 

The blade is already in motion, and this time he is close enough to feel the spray of red on his skin.  
  
It’s not Eren’s.  
  
He can still see Eren’s blood spilling over the titan’s back. He can still see everything as clear as day. Eren’s body slumping in a sickeningly wrong way and falling away from the titan he meant to kill. He can still see the bright color of fresh blood on the lifeless face he holds in his hands. He can still see the fear in the traitor’s eyes while he runs his own blade through him just a little too late.  
  
He will _never_ let it happen again.

 

——

 

Eren looks down at his hand in confusion, but his attention is immediately stolen by the blurred shape of Levi flying forward with near-inhuman speed. He watches on in horror and amazement as Levi brings down his attacker with practiced ease. A flash of silver draws his eye, and then his vision is filled with red. A droplet lands in his eye and stings, and he brings his hands up to wipe away the blood. Eren hears a splash, but the blood is still burning his eye and he doesn’t bother looking up to hear what caused it. He doesn’t look up at the second splash, either.  
  
He does look up when an arm wraps around him from behind and something cold and hard presses against his throat.  
  
When he does, he sees Levi alone at the river’s edge, grey eyes staring at him in wide-eyed terror. The knife in Levi's hand is still wet with blood. A drop falls from the blade's pointed tip and lands on the wet ground. Another follows.

 

——

 

 _Up this high in the hills, the sunset is even more beautiful. Their private plateau overlooks the wide valley around the castle, which is visible below. On clear day like today, one can see for miles. The view is breathtaking. It’s the kind of scene that artists dream of, the kind immortalized on the canvases hanging on the walls of even the most humble and run-down homes._  
  
_“Happy birthday, brat. I got you something.” Levi’s voice is soft, barely loud enough to be heard over the birds opening their dusk chorus. He looks down at the bunch of stems in his hand with a wistful smile before turning back to Eren. “It’s not much, but these are your favorite, right? Here. I thought you might like them.”_  
  
_Levi sits down on the ground next to his beloved, speaking quietly to him, looking out at the darkening landscape beyond the edge of the plateau._  
  
_“I can’t believe it’s been a year already.” He pauses when his voice begins to waver. “I… love you, Eren. I love you so much. I hope you know that.”_  
  
_He stands up and gives Eren one last look, his gaze lingering, stalling, prolonging the moment until it becomes unbearable._  
  
_“I have to go now, but I’ll see you soon.”_  
  
_A handful of bright purple forget-me-nots lands softly on the cold stone slab._

 

——

 

And another, but then no more.  
  
Not yet.  
  
There was no time for the boy to react when Eren threw him over his shoulder. As soon as his body thudded on the ground, Levi was already upon him, and his blade was sheathed in the boy’s gut, just above the hip.  
  
Eren kneels on the ground, panting, watching the situation unfold. It’s all moving so fast, he can’t keep up. Blood keeps running down into his eyes, obscuring the sight of Levi standing behind the familiar attacker, blood dripping from the blade again, cold venom dripping from Levi’s voice.  
  
“Is this the one?”  Eren nods at Levi. _Yes, that’s the one._ The look of wild joy on Levi’s face is disturbingly comforting to him. He watches as his lover wrenches his attacker’s head to the side by his hair, broken arm hanging uselessly by his side, knife against his throat just as he had his against Eren’s only moments ago. He hears Levi hiss into his ear, a thin, red line appearing when he presses the blade harder.  
  
“How does it feel? Does it feel good? Did you like having a knife in your guts?” Levi’s voice could make even the bravest man piss himself in terror, and right now it’s as frightening as Eren has ever heard it. It doesn’t frighten him, though. Not at all. Especially not when it’s the punk who nearly murdered him in an alley wetting himself at the sound of it. “Are you afraid?”  
  
The boy nods, wincing when the action inadvertently deepens the shallow cut on his neck.  
  
“Do you think someone is coming to save you? Do you think you’ll die if I just leave you here alone with a hole in your gut?” There’s a moment of silence as things come to a head. Options to be weighed. Futile escapes to plan. A show to provide. Levi looks at Eren with eyes full of love and regret, soft and apologetic in spite of the cruelty of his voice. Eren’s eyes speak of forgiveness, no hint of fear or anger anywhere to be found. Levi seems to have come to a conclusion. He locks eyes with the one who wanted Eren dead. Levi smiles, and it’s a chilling, blood-curdling thing, a nightmarish mimicry of a smile. “Only one way to find out, I suppose.”  
  
The knife finds its final resting place in a lung, nestled cozily between two ribs. Levi at least lets him choose what to do with it- he gets to decide for himself whether to take the knife out or to leave it in. He makes the loudest splash out of everyone when he’s shoved into the river; he was the biggest, after all. Much larger than Levi, who still threw him around like a rag doll.  
  
With justice finally served, the only thing on Levi’s mind now is Eren kneeling on the grass in front of him, face smeared with blood, both old and new. The nick on his temple still steadily oozes deep red. Levi's heart races, nausea rising inside him while he desperately tries to block out the memories that still flash before his eyes. He never wins that fight.  
  
His hand trembles while he carefully wipes the blood from Eren’s face, the strip of cloth torn from his shirt quickly becoming saturated in red. He can’t hold back anymore. Tears spill down his face as he looks into Eren’s own frightened eyes. It’s not going to happen again. He’s not going to fail Eren ever again.  
  
He’s not going to let him die without hearing him say it.  
  
“Eren,” his voice cracks, tears wetting his cheeks. “ _Ich liebe dich._ ”

The words strike Eren with force. Hearing those words spill from Levi's lips, seeing the sincerity in his eyes... He is overcome. He has _longed_ for Levi to say those words, to return them, imagined how they would sound spoken in Levi's deep, velvety timbre. He just hadn't expected it to happen _now_. He hadn't expected to hear Levi say that he loved him for the very first time, here, now, after everything that just happened, and it is the final straw for him.

Eren snaps.

He falls forward into Levi's steadfast embrace, all strength drained from his mind and body, and he soaks the torn white shirt in blood and tears and drool and snot and the outpouring of everything he can't express in words.

Levi doesn't need him to say anything. He knows. He feels as much guilt as relief at the reaction, and he holds Eren tightly against him until the sobs and shudders begin to ease. Eren wipes his nose on the back of his hand, and Levi pushes him back so he can examine his face. It's dirty and distressed, but the bleeding has mostly stopped. He still hates to see the blood on his face, and hates even more to see what memories surface when he does. He kisses Eren on his injured temple before reluctantly tearing himself away. He returns seconds later with another strip of cloth from his shirt, this one wet with the clean water from the river. He's even more gentle now when he dabs the cloth on Eren's skin, the river once again washing the filth away, carrying it out of sight but not out of mind.

"Levi... I want to go home."

Levi nods, pulls Eren forward with a loving hand on the back of his head, embraces him, and after a brief kiss on the forehead, he releases him. Eren brings his hands up to his face to wipe away the new tears that form in the corners of his eyes, but doesn't move from where he stands unsteady on his feet. Levi does, though, and scans the grass for Eren's belongings. He eventually spots the dark-colored backpack where they had left it, the search a little more difficult now that the sun has set. He walks over and retrieves it, both the bag and Eren's painted canvas surprisingly undamaged, and is on his way back to Eren's side when something else catches his eye. He stares down at a crumpled and torn sheet of white, knowing exactly what it is as soon as he sees it. He crouches, picks it up, turns it over. The broad swaths of green are there, the exact color of Eren's eyes, but unlike before, the page is now smeared with red-tinged brown, and the clash is so terrible to his eye that he never wants to see the shades combined again.

Still, he picks up his ruined watercolor and puts it in Eren's bag with everything else.

"I'll take you home."

 

 

 

 

 


	13. Penetrated deep into our formation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the title. Someone give me a better quote from canon so I can relieve you of the terrible joke.

  
_"Why am I here?_

\----

Eren winces.  
  
Levi's hand hovers in place. He stopped short when he felt the sudden pangs of guilt brought on by hearing Eren inhale sharply through his teeth. It was the sound of pain, and he caused it. Eren looks up from his lap at Levi crouching there with his hand suspended in the air in front of his face, bloody cotton ball still pinched between his fingers. He sees how startled Levi is, and though he is too tired to speak, Eren hopes that Levi can see the apology in his weary, red-rimmed eyes. What he sees on Levi's face is an even greater apology, wordless remorse written on every feature.  
  
It confuses Eren.  
  
It's all wrong, though his mind is too clouded to figure out why.  
  
Levi reaches out to cup Eren's downturned face in his palm, and Eren wonders if he imagines the tremor in that gentle touch. His gaze follows Levi when he rises from his position crouched in front of the toilet where he's been carefully examining and cleaning Eren's wounds. They're nothing more than superficial ones; a nick above his eye, a few scratches, a bruise or two steadily blossoming purple, yet Levi looks at them as if they are something grave and urgent, as if those cuts and bruises are the gaping wounds of his past.  
  
The ones that healed themselves.  
  
Levi's solemn face disappears from view, and Eren stares back down at his hands. Eren feels more than sees Levi tossing the bloodied cotton in the trash with the others, and senses him moving about the room, putting bottles and bandages back where they belong, but his mind is still elsewhere, the present barely a blurred image to him now. His hands, he notices, are clean, and he can't remember how they got that way. And the bandage on the heel of his palm, how long has that been there? He wiggles his fingers and his hand aches.  
  
It takes a second to realize that he's not looking at his hand anymore. It's too small, and it's upturned as if it's waiting to receive.  
  
Levi is standing patiently in front of him, silent, waiting for him to take it.

\----

Eren, clean and mended, is safely tucked beneath the sheets in his soft, warm bed. The one that's all his, the one that's in a cozy home in a peaceful city that doesn't have a single dungeon in any of its many attractive, modern buildings.  
  
Levi is sitting upright in the bed beside him, awake, eyes open but unfocused.

He sees the look of fear and anger on begging Eren's face, the unshed tears welling up in Eren's eyes. He sees blood and earth, an empty bed, purple splashes of life cut short at the stem splayed across cold, hard stone that bears his name above but nothing of him below. He sees the top drawer of his desk, open, and sees himself reaching for what's inside.  
  
_Too late._  
  
Too late and too soon, for everything- except regret.  
  
It was already too late when he realized that waiting is pointless. He'd waited until he lost any chance of doing what would have been so easily done had he not been so stubborn. Selfish. Stupid.  
  
Why did he wait so long to accept Eren's love for him? It's not like he didn't want it. And why, knowing how much they both ached for it, did he wait to make love to Eren until it became now-or-never, their first union marred by fear and pain and urgency instead of being the joyful thing it should have been? And why, for fuck's sake, why did he wait until Eren had been a year dead with nothing left of him to bury to tell him what he'd known from the start: that he loved him, that he loves him, that he has never even once felt differently, and that he is loved above all else in his life.  
  
He bears the weight of his regret for the rest of his life, alone, unspoken, until the day it buries him.  
  
And yet, somehow, here he is. Living, breathing, caressing his lover's hair, his Eren, who also lives and breathes and radiates warmth from every part of his being. He was given another chance and somehow, for reasons he can't comprehend, he hasn't taken it.  
  
He's doing it again. Waiting.  
  
Levi blinks away the images of blood and loss, sighing, looking down at the sleeping boy with bruises on his skin, and he slides down to settle himself under the covers beside him. He stares at Eren's sleeping face with his thoughts still racing, and his heart aches. He finally resolves to give his mind and body some rest, but not before brushing his fingers over Eren's cheek, which he kisses before laying his head down on the pillow, still facing him.  
  
He can't close his eyes, though; he can't stop staring at Eren. His touch returns to Eren's skin, the reassuring warmth of life beneath his fingertips, and soon his lips return to their place on Eren's brow, kissing him softly, cautiously, not wanting to wake him but unable to resist.  
  
With a small noise, Eren moves. Slowly, his eyelids open, and Levi sees that he's woken Eren despite his careful efforts to the contrary. Eren says nothing, only inclines his head to return Levi's affections, ghosting his lips over Levi's nose, his lips, his chin. Levi's eyes drift shut, and he tries to will away all thought and focus only on the present, on Eren, on the peace and safety of this moment. The warmth of Eren's lips, the hot breath fanning over his face, the scarred arms pulling him into a tight embrace, the understanding of all the unspoken things that each action carries.  
  
Before either of them realize it's happening, the gentleness of their kisses falls away, each one more firm and insistent than the last, each one pushing Levi's ruminating thoughts further and further from his mind. Arousal soon takes the place of worry and regret when Eren's tongue parts his lips, and Levi doesn't will away the new images that are taking shape in his mind's eye.  
  
They are images of Eren, wholly unlike the others. The Eren of the past, crying out his name, gasping, not in pain or fear, but pleasure, and the incredible heat of his body, inside and out. And then the sound of both Erens, past and present merging, calling for his _little fox_ in discordant tongues.  
  
He failed Eren today, just like before. Seeing that blood streaming down Eren's face, the knife against his throat... _No_ , he thinks, _not again. Not like last time._

\----

 _Tonight Levi is storming down the castle's corridors, his scowl an admonition to all: do not cross my path. He meets those who dare to do so with an icy glare that forewarns an imminent death and makes them shiver and retreat._  
  
_The mission is over. He survived._  
  
_He discards his cloak in the hall, tossing it aside with such disdain that one would think the cloth itself had offended him. His cravat is similarly discarded, yanked from his neck and flung against the wall, abandoned behind him in the corridor without so much as a backward glance. He's getting closer, step by furious step_ , _fingers blindly tearing at leather, yanking at buckles and straps._  
  
_He hasn't seen Eren yet, and he isn't looking for him. He doesn't need to; he knows Eren will be there, and his heart aches in knowing._  
  
_When he arrives at the stairwell, his hands are at his throat. Buttons clatter onto the basement's damp stone floor, and the door to the dungeon gives way under the force of his foot. He doesn't look at the armed guards inside, barely acknowledges them at all. "Keys," he says, holding out his hand. He hears one of the guards scrambling to remove the key ring from his belt, metal jingling as the guard nearly drops it several times, and it makes him impatient. "Keys," he says again with mounting threat, and then a sweaty hand slaps them onto his outstretched palm._  
  
_"Out."_  
  
_The guards obey, rushing past the Captain in fear, their eyes glued to the floor. They know better than to argue. If they had not been sent away and they had delivered their report as instructed, Levi might have heard how listless Eren has been the past few weeks. How he endlessly paced the few steps his chains allowed him. How he barely ate, barely slept, and how the meager sleep he did get was fitful and interrupted by whimpers and slurred cries. In this case, disobeying orders would grant them the more desirable outcome._  
  
_And Eren is there, just as Levi knew he would be; chained and shackled and behind bars._

\----

Their breaths are quick and heavy, a tangle of legs and tongues and moans, their bodies close and warm against each other. Levi is still split between two worlds; then and now, mind and body, past and present. Eren is at the heart of it all.  
  
Levi feels Eren here, now, and at the same time, he's feeling him then, there, in the life before. Hot, writhing... _Hard._  
  
He wants him.  
  
" _Eren,_ " Levi breathes across Eren's lips, "I want to touch you."  
  
Eren freezes in surprise. For a moment, Levi fears that he's made a mistake in asking, that he's overstepped his boundaries, misread the situation somehow. Eren quells his fears soon thereafter.  
  
He has no idea that Eren's been waiting for this, longing for him to make the first move.  
  
"Yes. Yes, please." Eren's answer is a sigh of relief for both of them.

\----

 _Shackles and chains, belts and keys and boots; they're tossed to the floor in a blur, and in another Eren is pinned to the mattress._  
  
_He_ _doesn't get a chance to greet Levi. Before he knows what's happening, Levi is on top of him, gripping his face, rendering him speechless and breathless from the ferocity of his kiss. Eren gasps, dizzy and disoriented, but in no way wanting this to stop. He surrenders, giving himself over to his Captain._  
  
_Eren doesn't know it, but Levi returned that night with a new mission-_

_He's going to do it right this time._

\----

Levi shivers when his hand presses against Eren's clothed erection. He feels it swell through the fabric, and he cups his hand around the rigid form, rubbing up and down it. Eren shivers, too, when Levi begins pressing and kneading him over his underwear. An electric current runs through his body, all the way up to the base of his skull. He groans.  
  
Levi's mouth travels up and down Eren's neck, kissing, sucking, whispering praises into his skin. Images of the past are still flickering across his mind. Something about these memories is different. They're the same as they've always been, but now they're tugging at him in a way they haven't before.  
  
He's remembering Eren writhing under his hands, under his body, moaning in time with every thrust, crying out his name, begging for more. He wonders what Eren was feeling during those times when they were alone and wrapped around each other. Before he can think more deeply on those curious thoughts, his full attention snaps back to the boy beside him now, in the flesh.  
  
Eren is groaning at the touch of Levi's hand, cautious in its ministrations on his still-growing erection. The thing that gets Levi's attention is the way that Eren's hands are moving. They're moving toward his, so Levi halts his movements. Eren's hands continue, and then they're hooking into the waistband of his shorts. His eyes close as his hands slowly push down, and the tantalizing sight of Eren sucking his bottom lip under his teeth makes Levi's heart thump in surprise and anticipation.  
  
Eren stares at Levi once he's revealed himself to him, still biting his lip, and Levi can't take his eyes off of him. When Eren reaches down and grabs his hand, Levi feels as if his heart has stopped, as if time itself is slowing down. He watches Eren drag his hand back up to where it was before, Eren placing his fingers over his own, guiding them both to wrap around his cock together.  
  
Eren's breath hitches at the feeling of Levi's hand around him, and Levi's reaction is a mirror image of his lover's.

\----

 _The second time they made love was nothing like the first._  
  
_Levi couldn't think of anything but Eren while he was away. All the things he'd done wrong, all the things he would make up to him tenfold if he made it back alive._  
  
_Levi did make it up to him, well into the morning._  
  
_He took his time with Eren that night, caressing him and stroking him with the full force of his affection, slowly and reverently kissing and marking every inch of golden skin. All of the attention was on Eren, and every kiss and suck and touch were a plea for forgiveness. His hands were gentle, and Eren's body was warm and pliant and eager._  
  
_There was only one similarity to their first time. Eren was begging for Levi to fuck him, though in an entirely different way than before._  
  
_Levi gave him everything he wanted and more, over and over until Eren ran dry, until he was shaking uncontrollably and utterly exhausted._  
  
_By the time Levi carried the sleeping boy up to his room, the sun was already up._

\----

He wants to touch Levi, too.  
  
And he does, with Levi bare atop his lap, Levi's cock slick against his, two hands stroking in unison. The rhythm of Levi's hand moving along their lengths falls out of step; his knuckles brush against dark hair when he leans in closer for a kiss. Levi swallows every whimper and sigh that Eren gives him until he himself has to part their mouths and gasp because Eren has stolen his breath.  
  
He remembers the feel of the first Eren in his hand. It's different now, unfamiliar. Eren is unquestionably perfect in his eyes, but he's wistful for a taste of the familiarity of the past. Eren's hand stops when Levi parts them and backs away, pulling Eren's hand off of him. He looks to Levi in confusion, but it doesn't last.  
  
Instead, there's surprise when Levi reaches down between them and takes them both in his hands. He locks eyes with Eren before maneuvering them so that the heads of their cocks are touching. Eren is even more surprised at the odd sensation he feels next, not realizing what's happening until he sees it for himself. He can't look away when he does. What he sees is Levi holding them both together, guiding his foreskin to slip over the head of his cock.  
  
Eren is overwhelmed by the feeling of being connected in a way they have never been before, a low moan leaving his throat when his head falls back in pleasure from being enveloped in the slick warmth of Levi's foreskin while he strokes them together. Levi watches Eren's face the entire time, his heart racing and his mouth dry from the sight of his lover, and the sounds of sheer pleasure his actions are giving him. His hand slips then, and Eren is forced even deeper, Levi's foreskin stretching enough to allow their cockheads to slide around each other, side by side, slick and sloppy with the clear fluid copiously oozing from them both.  
  
He has to stop. He wants more than just this. He needs to last, and at this rate, there's no way he will.  
  
Levi climbs back onto Eren's lap, pulls his face to him for another kiss, and they pant into each other's mouths while they press close, each grinding against the other's stomach. Eren can't decide where to put his hands. They roam across Levi's body; through his hair, down his face, his neck, shoulders, back, ass, thighs, constantly searching for the right place to land, but never finding one because all of Levi feels too good to settle on just one spot. His lips move, too, his tongue leaving Levi's mouth to lick up his jaw, the shell of his ear. Levi's entire body convulses with arousal, and undecipherable words of praise tumble endlessly from his lips.  
  
This riles Eren to the point of urgency. He redoubles his efforts, pressing his body even closer, rolling his hips harder, sucking at a spot on Levi's neck so hard that Levi outright whines. He isn't going to stop this time. He can't wait anymore. He wants Levi so badly, and he's resigned himself to the fact that it will never happen unless he asks for it. He wonders if Levi even wants it to happen. Eren swallows, preparing himself for the worst, that small amount of uncertainty worming its way into the back of his mind. He's not going to let it get the better of him. He has to go for it if he wants it to happen at all. He slides his hands up Levi's sides, his thumbs rubbing circles over Levi's chest, craving the feeling of those small, hard nipples beneath them, and the sounds he knows will follow. He toys with them, Levi keening at his touch while Eren gathers his courage.  
  
"Eren!"  
  
Levi is moaning non-stop now, and it gives Eren all the confidence he needs. He takes a deep breath, opening his mouth to ask, when Levi's moans turn to whines.  
  
"Eren, _ah_... Eren... Ah, _Eren, fuck me!_ "  
  
Eren freezes, wide-eyed in disbelief at what he's just heard. "Levi...?"  
  
He must have misheard him. He couldn't possibly mean it that way.  
  
He does.  
  
He's been thinking about it the entire time. That's what was tugging at the back of his mind. He wanted to know what Eren seemed to love so much. The thing that once made Eren come the instant it happened.  
  
He wants to feel Eren inside him.  
  
"Eren. Fuck me."  
  
Eren is agape, speechless, blindsided. His mouth opens and closes, unable to form any sort of response. Levi is staring at him, waiting, and nothing gives the indication that he isn't serious. He knows what he asked for.  
  
"Are... are you sure?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
There's an awkward moment of inertia between them. Neither of them knows what to do. Neither of them expected to be in this situation, either. It had always been the other way around. Eren never complained; on the contrary, he loved it. Needed it. Constantly. And Levi never argued otherwise. He didn't know how to react if Eren had asked. He didn't think he ever would have done it. But that was then.  
  
Things are different now.  
  
Eren breaks the silence first, whispering assurances to Levi, pushing him backward onto the bed. There's a hint of nervousness in Eren's kiss, and Levi senses it immediately.  
  
"My little beast. Hurry. I want you."  
  
One more kiss and Eren's leaning over to his nightstand. He finds the bottle he'd put there when he unpacked Levi's bag, and turns it over in his hand, contemplating it. It's different from anything they had before, right down to the bottle it's in. A laugh threatens to escape him when he recalls one particularly memorable night they shared. It was an exceptionally wild one, and at some point in the evening, unbeknownst to them, they'd knocked the oil onto the floor in their carelessness. Neither of them heard it shatter, but how could they have over all that noise? The part that really got to him was the memory of laying across Levi's lap afterward, with Levi trying to remove tiny shards of glass from his slippery, oil-covered ass cheek. He was laughing then, telling Levi not to bother. There were little wisps of steam coming from his ass from where the cuts were already beginning to heal, and Eren found this hilarious. Levi did not.  
  
Eren files that memory away for another time. There's another memory surfacing, and it's much more serious. There's sex and blood in this memory as well, and that's where the similarities end. He's intent on making sure that Levi never knows what that's like.  
  
And he's not going to leave when it's over.  
  
Eren's lips rejoin Levi's, and his hands travel down Levi's body, every touch careful and determined. Levi exhibits none of Eren's nervousness, kissing him eagerly and caressing his sides. That is, until he hears the bottle open and feels Eren's hand settling between his legs. Eren's fingers drift below his balls, and Levi tenses when those slick fingers inch slowly further below. He'd done this same thing to Eren dozens of times, but still... Levi turns his head away.  
  
"You don't have to do that," he mumbles.  
  
"Trust me." Eren knows what he's doing, though. He'll take good care of Levi. He'll make it feel good for him.  
  
Levi relaxes and entrusts himself to Eren's hands. His hole involuntarily twitches when Eren finally brushes over it, but Eren is gentle and attentive, paying close attention to his every move. Once he becomes accustomed to the sensation, he finds that he really enjoys it, despite initially being squeamish about the thought of Eren sticking his fingers up his ass.  
  
Eren stays focused on his task even though his mind is reeling. He can't believe this is happening. He can't believe he's doing this. He's never touched Levi here before, his most intimate place, and it somehow feels incredibly serious. A pivotal moment, monumental, an honor. Not to mention unbelievably erotic. He takes a deep breath to steady himself and then, for the very first time, he experiences what the inside of Levi's body feels like.

Eren gasps. Levi gasps. Grey and green eyes go wide. Breaths are held in surprise and astonishment until Eren's senses return to him.  
  
"Is this okay?"  
  
Levi nods and Eren's hand resumes, fingers twice as slick as before. Eren looks straight into Levi's eyes and doesn't dare to blink when he slides his finger all the way in, watchful for any sign of discomfort on Levi's face, relishing how smooth and hot Levi is inside. Levi shivers. "Hurt?"  
  
"No. It doesn't hurt at all, but that stuff feels disgusting." Levi tries his best to sound unaffected. Eren chuckles.  
  
"You'll thank me. It'll feel a lot worse without."  
  
Levi can't bring himself to dislike any of this. Eren was always kind and considerate, but this... This is downright _tender_. He's not sure how to feel about that, or that he should feel anything about that at all besides what he's currently feeling. Under Eren's attention, he feels... Loved. He wants more. Eren's fingers are moving inside him; pushing, curling, pressing, until all of a sudden his entire body jolts. He's about to apologize for coming already, but then Eren rubs against that spot inside of him again, and the same thing happens. Eren smiles at him, and he sees that he hasn't just come, but that Eren seems extremely pleased about something, and is now relentlessly pressing against that spot, forcing him to cry out, feeling like he's going to die or come or explode every time he does. It's too much. He's ready. It's time.  
  
Eren is feeling triumphal about being the son of a doctor right now. Levi looks wrecked.  
  
"Eren." His name is all Levi says, panting too hard to say much else, but Eren gets the hint.  
  
"Turn over. It'll be more comfortable for you that way." Eren can't get over what he's seeing. Levi is in his bed, in front of him, naked and on his hands and knees. He feels faint. " _... so beautiful,_ " Eren whispers to himself, unaware that Levi could hear him.  
  
"Did you just call my asshole beautiful?" Levi's tone is unimpressed, but Eren recognizes what's happening. Levi's being shy. The blush on his ears gives it away.  
  
"Excuse me. _Handsome._ " No response. Eren swallows, nervous. "Are you ready for me to... go inside?"  
  
"Yes." Levi nods once, insistent.  
  
Eren rests a hand on Levi's hip and begins to close the space between them. He takes his cock in his hand, and he can't help trembling. He swallows again, takes a deep breath, and aligns himself, not quite touching Levi's entrance.  
  
"No. Stop."  
  
Eren drops his dick as if he's been burned by it; his words are rushed and urgent when he asks Levi if he's okay. His heart is pounding. He's scared.  
  
"Not like this." Levi looks behind him and sees how terrified Eren looks, like he's on the verge of tears. That's not what he wanted at all. "I want to see you."

Soon Levi is looking at Eren's hand. His leg is resting over Eren's shoulder, and Eren's hand is trembling, gripping him like he's holding on for dear life. It's endearing. _Get on with it, Eren._  
  
"I'll go slow." Eren turns his head and kisses Levi's knee, and then...  
  
Levi feels himself stretch open, feels Eren pushing into him painstakingly slowly. Eren's cock is so hot, and it's pulsing, and somehow he expected this to hurt, but he feels fine. Good, even. Just... weird. Foreign. He has to calm his breathing, willing himself to relax. Eren's so hard, and he feels huge. It's intense. He thinks back to his times with Eren. He loved this for a reason, and now he's starting to understand.  
  
"It's... it's all in." Eren is breathing heavily, and Levi thinks he's never looked more gorgeous than he does right now with his jaw tight and his forehead glistening. "Are you okay? How does it feel?" He still sounds terrified.  
  
"Feels... like I'm taking a massive shit." Levi turns his face away and frowns when he says this, and Eren's grip on his leg tightens.  
  
"That's very romantic, Levi." Eren hangs his head in mock defeat, but when he looks back up his expression is sober. "Do you want me to stop?"  
  
"No. No, keep going."  
  
"That feeling will go away, I promise. I'll make you feel good."  
  
And then he moves, and everything else fades away. Something heavy is settling over them. They both feel it.  
  
Eren's thrusts are slow and smooth, and it only takes a few before Levi finally understands exactly why Eren loved being fucked so much. His toes are curling, and Eren is softly whining with every thrust. He's still watching Levi like a hawk, looking so concerned but so, so enraptured.  
  
Eren doesn't feel Levi hard against him anymore. He glances down between them and sees that Levi has started to lose his erection. Slightly worried, he asks, "Levi, does it feel good? Does your stomach hurt? Do you want me to stop?"

Eren doesn't look like he wants to stop. Levi knows he will, and this relaxes him more, floods him with even more warmth and love for him than he thought possible. He can barely speak. The best he can do is grunt. "Maybe... maybe a little cramp, but it feels amazing. Don't stop, I'm enjoying this, I don't know why I..."

Eren kisses him reassuringly. "It's okay, that's normal. It happens sometimes. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't hurting you." He's glad he isn't in any pain, and knows Levi is telling the truth. For him, it never meant he wasn't enjoying it, but he doesn't think Levi ever noticed it happening from time to time. Eren smiles, and thrusts into Levi a little harder and deeper, until the sound of his balls slapping against his lover's ass is interrupted by his lover's voice.

"Do you... _ah_... feel that?" Levi gazes into Eren's eyes and _knows_.  
  
" _... yeah,_ " Eren breathes, squeezing his eyes shut. Doesn't have to ask what Levi means. He feels it. Some sort of overwhelming energy, unlike anything they've ever felt before. Something falling into place, something settling, clicking into place, mollifying. _Right._  
  
The sounds of their lovemaking echo within the room, their bodies entwined and rocking together, and it's so difficult to keep it slow, but somehow they manage. Levi's body is tight around Eren, and they're both shivering and moaning from the intensity of being joined. Their bodies thrash and twist, they rest at times, rolling into new positions, exploring, experiencing, trying to make it last.  
  
The shorter man soon finds himself upright in Eren's lap, legs wound around his back, cock sliding against Eren's stomach where their bodies press close. They're hardly moving now, merely undulating as one being with slowly rocking hips. Eren's cock is isn't sliding in and out now as much as it's grinding up into Levi, the only motion their position allows. They're so close together like this, every barrier between them dissolved, and they truly feel as one.

Even the sounds they make are indistinguishable from another, joined in every way possible. Eren buries his head in the crook of Levi's neck, whispering and gasping into his skin, holding him so tightly that they can barely breathe. If Levi could see him now, he'd see Eren completely lost in him, his eyes closed, concentrating on everything Levi is giving him. Levi is similarly affected, with a hand that can't stop carding through Eren's sweat-dampened hair, with eyes closed just as tight, with Eren's name a moan on his lips.  
  
" _Sweetheart, sweetheart, mein schätzchen,_ " Levi gasps, every exhale a praise whispered into Eren's ear. " _Eren, mein schätzchen_ , _ich liebe dich. Ich liebe dich._ I love you. Ah, ah, _ah!_ " He feels Eren's body tremble at the praise, he feels and hears him gasp and whine. Every word of it is true and sincere, and there's an infinite supply of praise within him ready to be given. "My beautiful one, my treasure, my darling boy. You're so good... so _perfect_. I'm yours."

Levi plants gentle kisses on Eren's temple and licks the sweat that drips down it while he spills more breaths of praise into his ear, savoring him, squeezing around the hot, thick, unyielding hardness inside him. His insides flutter when he clenches his muscles around it, and he can feel how Eren's cock throbs in response.

The two are so consumed with each other that they can think of nothing else, if they are able to think at all. They feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing but each other. So wrapped up, so completely and utterly engrossed in one another that the only warning they get is the sound of glass shattering behind them.

 

 

  
 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey kids! It's your old pal shittyfoureyes here, and I'm about to give you The Talk™.
> 
> Since Levi and Eren are choosing to have unprotected sex in a setting where condoms exist, I feel that I should say a few words on the topic.
> 
> Unprotected receptive anal sex is the #1 riskiest form of sexual activity ([source](https://www.aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/prevention/reduce-your-risk/sexual-risk-factors/)). Aside from the physical risks such as the potential to cause hemorrhoids, anal fissures, and even a perforated colon if you're not careful, you're more at risk for contracting HIV and other STIs (and even parasites!) such as: human papillomavirus (HPV), typhoid fever, amoebiasis, chlamydia, cryptosporidiosis, E. coli infections (UTIs), giardiasis, gonorrhea, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, herpes simplex, Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus, lymphogranuloma venereum, Mycoplasma hominis, Mycoplasma genitalium, pubic lice, salmonellosis, shigella, syphilis, tuberculosis, and Ureaplasma urealyticum. ([source](https://books.google.com/books?id=oP91HVIMPRIC&pg=PA269))
> 
> The same goes for any form of unprotected sexual activity. You can protect yourself ad your partners by always using a barrier method like condoms, talking to your doctor about taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), educating yourself on safer sex practices, always communicating with your partner, and getting tested frequently.
> 
> Stay safe!


	14. Author's Note - Chapter 13 Illustration by bev-nap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An illustration of the events in Chapter 13.


	15. And just like that, everything changed.

She had returned home to retrieve some vital documents she had left behind in her hurry to leave earlier that week. She hadn't planned on staying any longer than it took her to grab her briefcase, but that was before she heard the worrisome sounds coming from upstairs. She relaxes once she ascertains that they aren't the sounds of a nocturnal intruder rummaging for valuables. She quickly recognizes the muffled voice of her son vaguely whimpering in a language unknown, no doubt having yet another nightmare. Nightmares are a frequent occurrence for the troubled young man, and she has always heard him call out many strange things in his sleep, including the name that just echoed down the hall in her otherwise silent house.  
  
The doctor sets her case back down by the door and walks across the kitchen to fill a glass of water before making her way upstairs to check on her son. The noises emanating from his bedroom grow clearer with every step she ascends, sounding stranger and stranger the closer she gets to their source. The gasps and whimpers seem almost pained now, and she worries that her son may be sick, or in need of more than just a cool drink and a reassuring word. She hurries the rest of the way up the stairs.  
  
She stands outside the open doorway and time slows down as she takes in the scene playing out in front of her.  
  
Her son's face seems at once tormented yet peaceful, his eyes tightly shut, his face nestled into the crook of a neck and his lips moving against its skin. He isn't asleep. He isn't sick. He isn't _alone_. She continues to observe this scene, to observe this other body sitting upright with its bare back to her, a pair of arms wrapped tightly around its flexing muscles, a bandaged hand cradling a head of glistening black hair.  
  
This body seated upon her son's lap with slowly rocking hips...  
  
This _man_.

Not just a man, but a man she's seen before in her own home.  
  
_Him_.  
  
The brief moment of disbelief shatters in the same instant as the glass that, in her shock, slips from her hand and litters the floor with sharp, jagged shapes that glitter and sparkle as they spread in slow motion across the wet wood.  
  
There is absolutely no mistaking what is happening in her son's bed. She _wasn't_ wrong.  
  
It _was_ a nightmare.

\---

Eren gasps and freezes in fear. Levi's first instinct is to roll over and face the threat that had ambushed them at their most vulnerable. Eren slips out of him when he does, and scrambles to cover himself, though Levi is apparently unconcerned with hiding his shame. He's leaning sprawled back on the bed supported by his arms, and it takes Levi a split second of gathering his wits before he springs up to shield Eren, becoming a protective barrier between the threat in the doorway and his still-frozen lover. Levi tenses and growls, fists at the ready, muscles primed to leap forth and kill, blindly and viciously.

\---

The words leave her mouth before she even realizes she's said them, spat with venom in a moment of shock, disgust, and above all, as she truly does love her son, an overwhelming sense of disappointment and despair.  
  
"I knew it!"  
  
And she had, or at least she'd suspected it, and chose to ignore those deep-seated fears, the ones that are being confirmed before her very eyes. She's always known there to be something very off about her son, something wrong, though she'd never been able to place exactly what, just that there _was_. He might be violent, delusional, antisocial, insane, all of the above... She never suspected it would be _this_.  
  
That is until the rumors and gossip stirred an even stronger sense of distrust within her, especially with the most recent one. A neighbor had told her that she'd witnessed her son kissing someone outside the school, and she'd initially been pleased to hear it.  He'd finally found some nice girl to bring home to meet her. The neighbor didn't seem to share the excitement, adding that the petite girl with long raven locks, the apparent object of her son's affections, looked rather masculine when she'd seen them walking down the street, hand-in hand. At the look of shock on her face, the neighbor rushed to reassure her that maybe she'd been mistaken about it. After all, it was getting dark, and she didn't have a clear view from that distance. Perhaps, bless her heart, the poor girl could have just been unfortunately homely.  
  
She decided to ignore the seeds of doubt that had been planted, choosing instead to remain excited that her son had at last met someone to settle down with, even if she wasn't exactly the blushing beauty she'd imagined being the mother of her many grandchildren.  
  
The neighbor had one more thing to add before the two went their separate ways.  
  
_I'd keep my eye on him if I were you._  
  
That was the last time she'd spoken with that neighbor before she was called urgently into the field, so she'd never had the chance to hear that same neighbor tell her that her son was kissing a man on the doorstep the night before last.

\---

Eren's mother says nothing more. She just stares at him with the most heartbreaking look he'd ever seen before she turns away and leaves. Eren can hear her storming down the stairs, across the kitchen floor, and finally out of the house, slamming the door behind her. It snaps him out of his terrified stupor.  
  
"Levi," he chokes. "We have to go. Now."  
  
Levi's trance is broken as well, Eren's statement confusing him. He can't make sense of it. She's gone, she left, it's over without a fight, why would _they_ need to leave? Before Levi can ask what the fuck is going on, Eren pushes him aside and surprises him even more by raising his voice at him.  
  
"Now! Get dressed, we have to leave before she-"  
  
"Alright," Levi interrupts, cold and stern, "I think it's about time you tell me what the _fuck_ this is all about." Levi turns to glare at Eren and softens when he notices the fear in his eyes.  
  
Eren releases a long, shaking breath. "We don't have time to spare, just hurry up and grab your things and I'll explain everything on the way."  
  
"Where are we going?"  
  
"I... don't know."

 

 


	16. Children of the Devil

  
"Take this."  
  
Levi catches the bag that Eren throws to him, though this doesn't spur him to action. Instead, he stands like a statue, silently watching Eren. He's confused. It's only been minutes since their peaceful moment was shattered, and Levi is still reeling from the shock of it. Eren promised to explain, so he'll have to remain patient because Eren refuses to be distracted from the task at hand.  
  
"Hurry! I don't know how long we have. Just grab what you think we need!" Eren says, in a rush to fill his own bag. He's overturned his dresser drawers, emptying their contents into a messy pile on the floor. He digs through the disarray, tossing aside things he deems unimportant while stuffing other items into the open bag beside him.  
  
Levi snaps out of his daze and gets to work. He never thought he'd be the one taking commands from a scout instead of giving them. He looks all around the room, still uncertain as to what exactly they'll need, as he has no idea where they're going or what they're doing. His eyes settle upon a multi-colored stack of books beside Eren's bed. Levi reaches for the one on the top, flipping it open to a page in the middle. Glancing down at the pages, he finds that it's a notebook, its lined pages filled with words and scribbles and smeared ink. He briefly scans the page and sees that everything is written in Eren's sloppy hand and that text is all in the long-dead language that he has no trouble understanding. One of the words stands out to him. It's the first word on the page, and he can't seem to tear his eyes away from it. It's his name.  
  
"Levi!"  
  
Levi claps the leather-bound book closed and tosses it behind him, startled to find Eren looking right at him, very displeased. He doesn't know how long he's been staring at his own name and not packing as Eren had instructed. He's not sure if Eren noticed what he was holding, or if he was even supposed to be looking at it. Eren doesn't say anything about it, just motions for Levi to move from his spot on the edge of the bed.  
  
Levi stands up, and in one sly motion, snatches the book from the still damp and disheveled sheets. His curiosity is getting the better of him, but he'll have to wait to satisfy it. He stuffs the notebook into the bottom of his bag and watches Eren shove his whole arm under the matress to fish for something hidden beneath it. Eren pulls an envelope out from its hiding place, opens it, flips through its contents, folds it, and slips it into his back pocket.  
  
"Do you have everything you need?"

Levi nods.

"Let's go."

\---

Eren stops in the kitchen on their way out of the house. He grabs Levi's bag from him, not commenting on how light it is, and holds it open beside him as he begins grabbing things out of cupboards and tossing them inside. Levi is left feeling useless but looks around the kitchen anyway. Maybe he'll see something they might need for whatever it is they're doing. A newspaper sits folded on top of the kitchen table, and he can't help but notice the headline printed in large black type at the top of the front page.  
  
SEARCH FOR MISSING TEENS CONTINUES  
  
He disregards this and glances over to the stack of mail beside the newspaper on the table. There's a letter sticking out from the middle of the pile, addressed to a name he doesn't quite recognize, though he's sure he remembers hearing it before. Yes, that's right, he has. He remembers now. Levi picks up the letter and holds it up for Eren to see.  
  
"Eren, I think this is for you."  
  
"Put it in the bag; I'll look at it later." Eren pauses at the door, reaching down into his bag, and eventually reveals what it is he was looking for. It's a ball of faded, tattered green cloth. He shakes it, and it unfurls and hangs straight. It's actually two swaths of cloth, and Eren separates them and hands one to Levi. "Here. Put this on," he says, draping the fabric over his shoulders as he reaches for the doorknob.  
  
Levi is staring down in disbelief at what Eren has just given him, and looks up just in time to see the Wings of Freedom spreading out over Eren's back, and he shivers as the cloak comes to a rest over Eren's broad shoulders.  
  
Eren opens the door cautiously, careful not to make any noise that might draw attention from the nosy woman next door, who always seems to be watching from behind the curtains. Warm light spills out into the darkness, and cool air rushes in. The breeze hits Levi, chilling him as it ruffles his hair. The edges of Eren's cloak flutter as he stands in the doorway, his green eyes are filled with insistence and fear while he holds the door open for Levi with as much patience as he can muster. "And cover your face."  
  
Levi crosses the threshold, and the hoods of their mantles obscure their faces in shadow when Eren pulls the door closed behind them.

\---

The pair makes their way onto the streets, passing under the street lamps with their faces cloaked beneath hoods of faded forest green. Briskly they walk toward the mysterious destination that only Eren knows, and Levi is the first to break the tense silence.  
  
"Where did you get these?" Levi asks sternly, voice low, but loud enough for Eren to hear. He knows that their cloaks couldn't possibly be brand new like the replicas sold in the museum they visited. Well preserved as they may be, they are still ancient; they smell of dust too aged, the cloth is far too faded and threadbare.  
  
"I stole them," Eren says this so matter-of-factly that it catches Levi off guard. "From the museum."  
  
"And no one noticed you doing this? Where did these even come from?" Levi recalls the numerous glass cases they passed on their way into the museum. But how? The museum was packed with people, how could he not have been seen? He couldn't have. He must have gotten them from somewhere else, somewhere not in plain sight. Where that was, he doesn't know, but that's the only answer that makes sense to him.  
  
"It was easy with everyone busy gawking at Annie. I put my handkerchief around my fist, broke the glass, and yanked them off the wall. Nobody even turned around. Stuck 'em in the back of my pants and put them in your backpack when you weren't looking."  
  
"Huh."  
  
They were silent the rest of the way.

\---

"I'd like a room for the night, please." Eren turns to pull an envelope out of his back pocket, and when he turns back around, he notices the woman behind the desk eyeing him up and down. He hadn't taken into account how odd they must look walking around in antique Survey Corps cloaks. "Costume party," he replies, answering her unasked question.  
  
"I see," she says, looking down at the open book in front of her. "And your name?"  
  
"Eren Jäger."  
  
Levi's head whips in Eren's direction, surprised. He doesn't have to say anything for Eren to understand what he's thinking. _Are you stupid? We have run out of your house and hide our faces, and you give them your real name?_ The look Eren gives back conveys a similar message. _Oh_ , Levi thinks to himself, momentary panic resolved.  
  
Pen poised hovering over the page, the receptionist looks up at Eren, raising her eyebrow at him as if to say _really, kid? You expect me to believe that?_ She decides she doesn't care enough to argue. Eren pays her, and she slides a large, numbered key chain across the desk, which Eren grabs. "Room 104, on your left. Have a pleasant stay."

\---

Once they're safely in their room, door locked and chained, Levi's impatience gets the better of him. They haven't even removed their shoes before he's asking Eren the same question again.  
  
"Okay, now what the fuck is going on?"  
  
Eren sits on the edge of the bed and sighs. He's looking down at his hands in the darkness of the room when he finally decides to answer Levi. "We can't be together."  
  
A lump forms in Levi's throat and prevents him from speaking. Eren scrambles to clarify, realizing what he just said.  
  
"I mean, we're not supposed to be together."  
  
Eren's clarification does nothing to ease Levi's worry. He says nothing, just stares at Eren, wide-eyed in concern and confusion.  
  
Eren sighs again and runs his fingers back through his hair. He scoots backward on the bed, crossing his legs, and nods his head toward the empty spot in front of him "Sit down."  
  
Levi swallows, anxious, but obeys.  
  
"What I mean to say is it's illegal for us to be together. For two men or two women to be together. You really didn't know that?"  
  
Levi is somewhat relieved, releasing the majority of his anxiety in a long, drawn-out breath. "No. I didn't."  
  
"How?" Eren is the one who looks confused now. _How can he not know?_  
  
"Remember what I said? No school, no family? I never interacted with anyone or paid any attention to anything. I just... wandered. I don't even know what year it is. Answer good enough for you?"  
  
" _Levi..._ " Eren breathes, voice heavy with sadness and emotion.  
  
"Why should I have? I don't belong here."  
  
And Eren understands. He knows that feeling all too well. It's time to give Levi the explanation he's been desperately waiting to hear.  
  
"It's a sin. Remember when I told you that my parents were religious? It's different now. A different religion. It's not the same as it was before. No one worships the goddesses anymore. It's something entirely new." Well, new to _them_. "Someone discovered some ancient texts from outside the walls, something we never knew about back then. I don't know when it happened, or how, but the goddesses of the walls are now just myths to everyone. Somehow the old ways died out, and this new religion took its place."  
  
Levi listens intently. A _sin_? The worshippers of the walls never preached anything like this.  
  
Eren continues. "And it's not just a small cult like it was before. It's the law now. It's _mandatory_. It's illegal not to obey this new religion's god."  
  
That still doesn't explain why Eren thinks being a sinner is such a big deal. " _And?_ I'm still not seeing why that matters."  
  
"Do you know what the punishment is for people like us?"  
  
_Obviously not, or I wouldn't be asking._  
  
"Death. It's death. They execute people like us, Levi. They call us children of the devil. They blame us for the titans. They say that titans are there to punish us for our sins. That we become titans, devils, and they have to kill us before that happens."  
  
"You have to be fucking kidding me."  
  
"I'm not! And you know one of the reasons why? Cause we can't have children."  
  
Levi can't believe what he's hearing. This makes absolutely no fucking sense. "So let me get this straight. They can murder us because of... love. And not producing screaming, snot-nosed brats. That makes sense." Levi's tone is dripping with sarcasm and more than a little anger.  
  
"Yeah, and you know why? It's cause they need soldiers to fight the devil. They need people to have kids so they can send them off to fucking die because of some made-up bullshit religion. Joining the military is like some sort of twisted coming of age ritual. So for me, it's either fight or get hung from the walls."  
  
Eren can see the rage coming over Levi, far different than the despair and resignation he feels.  
  
"My mom works for the government, and she saw us having sex. _Now_ do you understand why we had to leave in such a hurry? I don't know what she's going to do. I don't think she'd hesitate to turn us in."  
  
"Eren," Levi looks Eren straight in the eyes, stern and severe. "I'm not going to let that happen."  
  
   
  
 


	17. As Long As They're Still Breathing

  
"I'm not going to let that happen."  
  
Levi takes Eren's hand, squeezing it with bruising force, looking him straight in the eyes to let Eren know he's serious. He means it. He's finally found the one thing that will ever matter to him in this world, and he will never let anyone take that away from him. He vows to protect Eren until his dying breath and not fail him as he did so long ago. Eren's hand is trembling even though he's trying his best to act brave for Levi. Eren is scared. They both are. The shorter man tugs on Eren's hand, pulling him into his arms to tightly wrap them around him.  
  
"I won't lose you," Levi says, his face pressed to the top of Eren's head. He nuzzles his nose into Eren's soft brown hair, inhaling the familiar scent he's missed dearly. "I can't lose you. I could never live without you again." There's a near-imperceptible waver in his voice, and it surprises him, though Eren cannot hear it. _Humanity's strongest._  
  
Those words ring in Eren's ears. They pierce him with force, penetrating deep into his very soul. Something about the way Levi said it unsettles him, and he feels a sharp twinge in his chest as he replays those words in his head. _I could never live without you again._ He's quiet as he turns the words over and over, and somberness descends upon him. Levi lived without him.  
  
"Levi," Eren starts to ask, sitting up on Levi's lap so that he can look at him. "How..."  
  
Levi's breath hitches, anxiety fluttering in his chest over what Eren's question might be. He knows he has only seconds to react, to change the subject, to distract Eren, to escape the inevitable. His idea comes to him quickly, and he interrupts Eren before he has to hear him ask the question that he's dreaded he would someday have to answer.  
  
"I feel filthy. My ass feels horrible." There. A perfect escape. Eren won't think twice about him suddenly needing to be clean. His excuse works.  
  
Eren's posture stiffens in alarm, and he asks worriedly, "Did I hurt you? Are you okay? Fuck, I'm so sor--"  
  
Levi supposes that he should have expected this reaction, but he didn't have time to think about that. Eren has always been overly concerned about his well-being, partly out of love, and partly out of Eren's shame and self-loathing for being a titan, a monster, violent and careless and impossible to control. He interrupts Eren again.  
  
"Eren, no, I'm fine. It's not that. All this stuff in my ass, it's slimy, it feels like I shit myself. Fucking disgusting." _Did Eren forget that he had his dick in me an hour ago?_

At this admittance, Eren's tension seems to unwind. He even chuckles at how his Captain's obsession with cleanliness decided to rear its head during such a serious moment. Levi is somewhat surprised but comforted in hearing it, and comforted further by the relief of successfully avoiding having to have that conversation.  
  
 "Ok," Eren says. He kisses Levi's head. "Let's go get cleaned up."

\---

Levi sighs deeply in relaxation when he sinks into the hot bath, not even realizing how tense and exhausted he is until this moment. The only light comes from a small lamp outside the room, and the tranquility of being in the dark, enveloped in pleasantly-scented steam and the bathwater's permeating warmth soothes him immensely. The bathtub is large enough to fit both of them comfortably, yet Eren has not yet joined him in it. "Eren," he calls,  voice smooth and drowsy. He hears a violin playing faintly from the bedroom, its elegant, lonesome voice swelling higher and higher until it marries with the richness of harmony, deeper strings rising to cradle its lonely melody, to complement it, to form a whole greater than the sum of its parts.  
  
Only a few seconds pass until Eren is stepping into the water behind him. The water rises, and he feels Eren's legs sliding forward, a light scratch of hair against his bare thighs as Eren surrounds him. Levi reclines back onto Eren's chest, and he positively melts into the safety and security of Eren's arms. Eren kisses Levi's shoulder, eliciting a soft hum from him as he closes his heavy-lidded eyes. Eren breaks the embrace to twist toward something behind him, but Levi is too exhausted to care. As long as Eren is here, nothing else matters.  
  
Try as he might, Levi can barely keep his eyes open, and he breathes deep and steady while Eren washes him with a soft cloth. He relishes the feel of Eren's loving ministrations on his skin, his touch gentle but thorough, just as it has always been.  
  
The pair relaxes together in the darkness, the passage of time only marked by the gradual cooling of the water. Eren's chest rises and falls in an easy rhythm, and the lazy way Eren strokes and caresses his skin is enough to lull Levi to sleep.  
  
Eren, exhausted as he is, stays awake. His thoughts and questions and worries are too demanding to allow him to sleep. Eren closes his eyes and rests his head back against the edge of the bathtub while he listens to the calm way that Levi breathes, and he can feel Levi's heartbeat against his skin. He's thinking about what's to come, and where they're going to go from here. His mind wanders back to what Levi had said to him earlier that evening. _I could never live without you again._ He imagines how that must have been for Levi, how it would be if it were him who had lost Levi instead. The life he imagines for himself after losing his beloved is nothing but pain and grief and loneliness, and Eren can hardly fathom having to endure the horror of helplessly watching Levi die the same way he had. Eren feels enormous guilt over leaving Levi alone, over making Levi have to watch him die in such a brutal manner. The thought alone is too much for him to bear.  
  
Eren tries to pull himself out of the past, to focus on being here with Levi now, where both of them are safe, however long that safety lasts. He vaguely registers that the music has stopped. There's a voice coming from the radio now, not singing, but speaking, and the sound of it irritates him. It seems to be a news report, but in his current state, Eren can't care less about it. He can barely make out what the man on the radio is saying, understanding only a few snippets of disconnected words, to which he pays no mind.  
  
_... sighting ... advancing titans ... wall... reserves ... standby ... able bodied ... years of age ..._  
  
Eren's not actively listening to what is being said, none of it even registers to him as more than grating noise, yet he somehow feels a vague sense of dread seeping into him. He puts his hands on the edges of the bathtub, getting ready to go and turn off the radio when Levi stirs.  
  
"Schatz," Levi murmurs. "Don't go."  
  
And so Eren stays, holding Levi tightly from behind in the lukewarm water, Levi's head lolling back onto his chest. His intrusive thoughts are no less noisy than before, and he is so distracted by them that he almost doesn't hear Levi mumble something to him before dozing off again.  
  
"I love you too."  
  
As the words leave Eren's mouth, the man in the other room disappears, and Eren finally wills himself to relax, succumbing to a piano's tender sonata.


	18. I won't even be able to remember you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags added for this chapter.

It was well past midnight.

Levi couldn't sleep.  
  
Neither could Eren.  
  
Both were heavy with thought and guilt, unable to rest in any sense of the word. So many unanswered questions tugged at both of them, and Levi knew he couldn't keep this from Eren forever. Eren kept asking, and it weighed enormously on him each time he denied Eren his answer.  
  
Levi couldn't dodge it again, and he knew it. He regretted not being completely open with Eren in the past, and he's not going to make the same mistake twice. Eren deserves to know. He can't hold it any longer. The burden was eating him alive.  
  
"Eren," Levi says, suspecting that Eren was still as awake as he. "I need to tell you something." He feels nauseated and afraid, but he has to do this. He's made his choice.  
  
"Hm?" Eren replies. "What is it?"  
  
"You... keep trying to ask me how I died. Do you really want to know?"  
  
Eren immediately straightens and looks at Levi in the dark, surprised and with some apprehension. He'd definitely noticed how Levi would always change the subject before he could fully ask, and he also saw how negatively Levi reacted when he tried to bring it up. Though he was curious, he decided to let it go and not pursue the topic further. Levi must have had his reasons. Still, he couldn't stop thinking about it.  
  
"Do you really want to tell me?"  
  
There's a long pause before Levi gives any sort of response. After a while, Levi exhales slowly, and sidles up to Eren, softening in his arms. And then, after another lengthy moment of tense silence, he begins to talk.  
  
"It was so hard, Eren. Being without you."  
  
Eren listens intently, holding him close.  
  
He listens to Levi tell him about all the things that had changed after he was gone. How he couldn't stand to be around people, how he especially couldn't bear the sight of Armin and Mikasa.  
  
Eren's throat tightened at that revelation. He'd thought about his friends often, and how much he missed them and wished they were here with him in this life, but he hadn't thought to consider how they must have felt after his death. He feels even more guilty.  
  
"I couldn't fight anymore, not without you by my side. You were my strength. You were my other half. I never knew exactly how much I needed you until you were gone, and I'm sorry for every single second I took you for granted."  
  
Eren feels Levi shiver against him.

\---

Levi changed after he and Eren became lovers. It was subtle at first. The way his countenance had changed, how his eyes became softer, brighter, how he had actually started to _smile_ , how he greeted each day with a renewed energy, a sort of new motivation- with hope.  
  
It pleased everyone to see the Captain seemingly enjoying life, even going so far as to call him cheerful. Levi's relationship with Eren was a secret to most, and many had wondered what had inspired this sudden and drastic change in their once stoic and detached Captain.  
  
Sometimes, when the couple thought no one was watching, Erwin would catch glimpses of private moments of affection between them. A grasped hand, a soft utterance, a head leaned against a shoulder, and through all of them, Levi looked at ease. Eren was the only one Levi could truly trust, and he trusted him with everything. Though he'd tried to stay cool and professional in public, Levi was always softer when Eren was around. He was always gentle when it came to Eren. Eren made him happy. It was evident to him just how much they adored each other. And though he never said anything to Levi about it, Erwin was happy for him. Truly.  
  
Likewise, Levi changed after Eren's death. It was like all of the light had left his eyes, all fight had gone from him, like he had given up. For a while, Levi tried to hide it, but everyone could tell that the new, hopeful Levi was gone. Even the old Levi was gone. Where once was humanity's strongest soldier now stood a broken man. A shadow of his former self. A husk. A ghost.  
  
And, after a while, they stopped seeing Levi altogether.

\---

Levi had been isolating himself more and more as time went on, but it wasn't like him to skip out on his duties entirely.  
  
They had seen Levi that morning, saddling his horse and riding out towards the wooded outskirts of the castle. Levi hadn't said where he was going or why. He hadn't said anything at all, and everyone knew it was better not to ask.  
  
Morning became afternoon, and when evening rolled around, there was still no sign of Levi.  
  
It wasn't until Levi neglected to show up for an important meeting later that day that Erwin started to worry. He knew how much Levi was struggling with his grief after Eren's death, and he tried to be there for Levi the best he could. Levi was cold and closed off, and no matter how earnestly Erwin tried to help, Levi had always turned him away. Levi barely even talked these days, let alone accepted help from anyone.  
  
Erwin had seen Levi's horse in the stable, so he knew Levi must have returned at some point. He'd decided to ask around to see if anyone had seen him, and no one had. Thus, Erwin decided to search for him on his own.

\---

Erwin knew something was wrong the minute he opened the door to Levi's room.  
  
The candle on Levi's desk had burned down to the wick, leaving the room in darkness, but Erwin could still make out the shape of Levi sitting at his desk.  
  
Perhaps he had just fallen asleep and missed the meeting, Erwin reasoned, though deep down he knew that wasn't what had happened.

It was too quiet.  
  
A sense of dread fell over him as he lit the lamp beside the door, and he froze in place. Levi was at his desk, leaned back in his chair, but something was wrong. Very wrong. Erwin hesitated, observing, and he swore loudly when he noticed what was on the floor beside Levi.  
  
At that moment, a scout, who must have heard Erwin cursing from the hall, approached the doorway where Erwin stood with his back to him. The young soldier addressed him by rank, but it seemed like Erwin hadn't heard him.  
  
 “Commander??” the scout asked again, louder this time.  
  
"Stop where you are. Go get Hanji.” Erwin's voice was like ice, and he did not turn around to face the soldier before he answered.  
  
“Sir?” the scout questioned, confused.  
  
" _Now._ ”  
  
“Yes, sir!”  
  
And by the tone of Erwin's command, the scout knew better than to linger and with great haste, he began to run down the hall to fetch Hanji.

\---

“Happy birthday, brat. I got you something. It’s not much, but these are your favorite, right? Here. I thought you might like them. I can’t believe it’s been a year already. I… love you, Eren. I love you so much. I hope you know that. I have to go now, but I’ll see you soon.”  
  
The ride back to the castle was a slow one. Levi was in no rush to return, the only thing he would have had to go back to was now nothing but a stone on the ground, a vial of ash in his pocket.  
  
There would be no bright-eyed boy there to greet him. He'd return to a cold and empty room.

\---

Hanji was now beside him, and Erwin didn't know why he'd even bothered calling for them. It was because of denial that he'd sent for them. Because he wanted to know if there was any hope that what he'd seen wasn't true, any chance at all that he'd made a mistake, that he was wrong and this wasn't happening.  
  
Erwin watched Hanji, and after a useless examination by the closest thing the Survey Corps had to a doctor, they'd turned to look at him with deep apology in their eyes.  
  
“Erwin, I’m…"

“Not now," Erwin interrupted, the anger in his voice betraying his true emotions.  
  
“But…”  
  
“Not now, Hanji.”  
  
"Then, your orders?”  
  
"No one is to know about this. No one. Understood?”  
  
Hanji only nodded in response and stood beside Erwin. They took hold of Erwin's hand, and they stood in silence and let the reality of what they saw sink in.

\---

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to have to see this.”  
  
Levi opens the drawer.  
  
“Please forgive me.”  
  
He raises his arm.  
  
"I couldn't do it alone."  
  
He closes his eyes.

\---

Hanji, weak in the knees, slumps down onto Levi's bed, burying their face in their hands.  
  
"I didn't know," Hanji croaks in a broken voice.  
  
"I suspected," Erwin replies, hollow and flat.  
  
Hanji looks up at the Commander with a pleading look of disbelief. "Then why didn't you do anything?"  
  
Erwin says nothing.  
  
"I still can't believe it."

After a long silence between them, Erwin finally speaks.  
  
"I hope he's happy."  
  
They both knew Levi was suffering, but apparently, they had misjudged the extent of it. Neither of them thought he'd go this far. They should have done more. But what? Neither of them knew what they could have done differently, but still, they should have done _something_. They stare blankly.   
  
The revolver on the floor at Levi's side, his stiff, cold fingers dangling above it. The glass vial clutched loosely in his lap. The key resting atop a blood-spattered drawing on Levi's desk.  
  
With resolve, Erwin meets Hanji's watery eyes.  
  
"We need to think of something."

\---

“Zackley is demanding an explanation.”  
  
“I know, Hanji.”  
  
“Erwin, what are you going to tell him?”  
  
“I can’t lie.”  
  
“You don't have to.”

\---

“That’s all? You delayed your report for this? And what, exactly, is your reason for keeping me waiting?”  
  
"We had to be certain.”  
  
"Hm. I see. Well, this is a special case, so I can understand your reasoning. I'll let it slide this time. Don't let it happen again. You're on thin ice as it is."  
  
"Yes, I am aware of that. I thank you for your understanding, Commander Zackley."  
  
_Missing in action._

\---

Nobody saw Levi again after that day, and nobody ever knew what had actually happened. The rumor was that he'd not returned from a secret Survey Corps operation outside the walls, and that was all that was ever said. For all anyone knew, he could still be out there somewhere.  
  
Hanji and Erwin's last duty to Levi was to give him a proper burial. As one final gesture to them both, their own kind of silent apology, they gave Eren a proper burial as well. They laid his ashes to rest with Levi, the vial clutched in Levi's lifeless hand, fist closed in a last salute over his heart. In secret, and wrapped in Eren's cloak, they buried Levi in the ground beside the tombstone on the hill that bore his lover's name.  
  
And life went on.

\---

"Levi..."  
  
It's all Eren can say.  
  
Levi is silent. He neglects to tell Eren that it's not the only time he's died. _That's_ something he doesn't need to know.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Chat](http://chat.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx)  
>  National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 24 Hour phone 1-800-273-8255


	19. I Wasn't Brave Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.

  
" _Levi..._ "  
  
Eren's cheeks are wet with silent tears. He feels like he's choking, suffocating, his lungs robbed of breath, his ears ringing from the shock of Levi's revelation. He can't believe what he's just heard. He must be dreaming, he thinks. This can't be real. He's going to wake up soon, and Levi is going to tell him that he lived a long, peaceful life and died of old age.  
  
But, like so many other things, it isn't a dream. Levi is serious. His face is turned away in shame, hidden features pinched with pain and the effort to hide it.  
  
Neither of them knows what to say. What could he even say to Levi after that? That he's sorry? That he shouldn't have done it, that he should have been strong and gone on without him?  
  
At that moment, Eren recalls what he'd seen that day in the museum, that thing that had chilled him, and that Levi had insisted was a lie: that _he_ was the one who killed Levi. And though it wasn't with his own hands as history had recorded, he knows now that what he'd read was true. _He killed Levi._  
  
"Levi..." he says again, dripping with guilt and remorse. "I'm sorry."  
  
Then, with nothing more said between them, they hold each other in the night, still as death, and just as silent.

\---

They seek forgiveness in each other's arms, hoping desperately to forget that cruel life they'd lived and stopped living far sooner than either of them should have. It's over now, and what's done is done, and now they've been given another chance, another life, as impossible as that seems; an opportunity to make for themselves the life that should have been and never was.  
  
And so, Eren takes this chance to do what he wasn't around to do before.  
  
He takes his brave Captain's face in his hands, and he tastes the salt on his lips when he kisses away every tear that Levi tries so hard to hold back. Levi shudders under Eren's expressive touch, and all he can do is close his eyes and surrender to it, to let Eren stitch him back together as best he can. Eren kisses his Captain's eyelids and presses his head to the beating pulse at his neck.  
  
He remembers something else now, a scene from days gone by. A scene played out in his basement cell, of Levi loving him with everything he had, the comfort of it, more than pleasure.  
  
Eren kisses him again, this time on the lips. He licks away the salt of sorrow on Levi's lips, and Levi can taste the remnants of it on his tongue. It all dissolves away, and he soon tastes nothing but Eren.  
  
" _Amsel,_ " Eren whispers across Levi's wet and parted lips, and Levi opens his eyes to meet him.  
  
Eren is tender and affectionate, warming every naked inch of Levi's skin with soft kisses and breaths and the light caress of fingertips. Eren buries his fingers in silken raven-black, and Levi sighs, instinctively baring his neck for Eren to kiss next.  
  
Eren does kiss it, softly at first, until soft becomes tenacious, and wet blossoming red appears on the invisible trail his kisses left. Eren can feel the moan in Levi's throat tickling his lips with vibration, and the smoldering ember between them flares to life.  
  
"Levi," Eren breathes against Levi's neck. "Do you want to..."  
  
"Yes." Levi's answer is immediate, not needing Eren to finish what he's asking. His answer is accompanied by his hips rolling against Eren's leg, making it clear that he knew exactly what Eren was asking.  
  
Eren's response is as quick as Levi's answer had been, and Levi finds himself pinned beneath Eren's hands, his lover hovering over him with uncertain, yet desirous eyes. Levi reassures Eren with the hand he wraps around his cock, the hard flesh of it brushing against his own when he strokes it.  
  
Levi's grip loosens and falls away when the weight of Eren's body leaves him, and he lies back panting until his lover returns to his side, bottle in hand.  
  
"You... I don't have to... this time," Eren says to him, vaguely.  
  
"No," Levi says. "I want you to. Eren," he pauses. "Make me forget.

Levi takes Eren's lips between his, kissing him, nipping, sucking at his bottom lip as he pulls away, planting his hand on Eren's shoulder, pressing him to the bed. More kisses trail down Eren's neck, Eren arching into the touch, and he moans when Levi's tongue drags firmly over his nipple. Eren whines, his fingers returning to tangle again in Levi's hair, pushing Levi's face closer, silently begging for Levi to suck.  
  
Levi's hands wander lower while he sucks the tiny nub into his mouth, flicking it with his tongue, pulling another whining moan from Eren. Eren moans again, much louder, the hairs on his body prickling with goosebumps when he feels Levi's fist close around his cock and start to stroke him.  
  
Eren's breath picks up, hitching at times, and he pants while Levi continues the trail of kisses down his body. Levi's lips travel lower and lower, tickling Eren when they descend below his navel and his body tenses when Levi stops. Eren holds his breath, wide-eyed and staring down at Levi while Levi stares back at him with intent.  
  
It felt like a thousand years to Eren, but it was only a split second, a blink of an eye before Levi took him in his mouth, and Eren shouts at the first hard suck to the head of his aching cock.  
  
" _Ah!!!_ "  
  
Levi's hunger surges when he hears Eren's cry of pleasure, and he swallows Eren down greedily, moaning around Eren's cock as it slides in and out of his mouth, leaving the taste of Eren all along his tongue. His hand wanders again, caressing Eren's thigh, pushing it back, squeezing at what he can of Eren's ass. To Levi's great delight, tremors wrack Eren with every bob of his head and flick of his tongue.  
  
"Levi!" comes Eren's broken cry, "Levi! _Ah!_ "  
  
It is music to his ears, and he's lost in it. He's forgotten everything except for this single moment in time until Eren stops him with a push of a hand. The moment shatters, and he blinks in confusion, saliva dripping from his chin until Eren assures him.  
  
Eren is panting so hard that he can barely speak, stopping to catch his breath between words. "No... No, I want to... Let me take care of you." He sits up, scooting back from Levi, still trying to calm his breathing.  
  
"Eren?"  
  
Eren pushes his hair back from his face, releasing another long breath in an effort to cool himself down. He gathers himself and then looks to Levi, who is still staring at him in confusion. "Lie back."  
  
Levi obeys, willing himself to relax, to let Eren take control. Soon, he finds that he's become a mirror image of Eren as he was before, with Eren mimicking every one of his actions, every kiss and caress and, before long, every suckle of hot, wet mouth on his cock.  
  
Everything is the same as before, just with him on the receiving end of things, until suddenly, it's different. There's a sound, a pop, a cap being opened, and then Eren's mouth is on him again, a tongue slipping under his foreskin, a finger sliding into his body.  
  
Levi jerks and Eren stills, but it's only an involuntary reaction to the unfamiliar intrusion. After the initial shock, he finds that he quite likes the rush he gets from having Eren's fingers inside him, and he relaxes. Eren is careful, attentive. It fills his mind with images of what they'd done before, the memory of Eren's touch, of Eren's body... and, soon, an aching desire for more.  
  
"Eren." Levi's voice is low and pleading, and Eren understands. He feels Eren's fingers leave his body, feels the shifting weight, and then Eren is atop him again, gazing into his eyes with so much love and care that he feels it as if it were tangible, as if warmth were weight, a blanket spreading over him and melting, dissolving into his very being.  
  
Levi is ready for what comes next. His body aches for it. He isn't left wanting for long. With their eyes locked, their bodies join. He feels the way his body tenses just before it yields to his adoring lover, hissing at the peculiar sensation that he's still unaccustomed to, and he savors the sweet relief that comes from Eren burying himself inside him, as deep as their bodies allow.  
  
Levi nods.  
  
He wants more.  
  
They move together, and Eren gives Levi exactly what he wants. Levi is lost in him, unable to focus on anything but the overwhelming pleasure of Eren's cock sliding languidly in and out of him. They gasp and sigh, and Levi can't see how intently Eren is watching him, scrutinizing his every reaction for even the slightest sign of discomfort. And it is strange still, this feeling of friction and fullness, but he doesn't dislike it at all. He craves more of it, and he wonders if this is how it always felt for Eren. He hopes so.  
  
They don't rush. They want to feel everything, to revel in every intimate detail, every sound and sensation and emotion that their lovemaking brings. There's no threat of interruption this time, no fear, and they're going to give each other what was cruelly stolen from them before.  
  
And though they try to make it last, it's too much to endure. Eren is conquered by the awareness that he is inside Levi, their former roles reversed, the feeling of it is as unfamiliar to him as it is to Levi. His body is hot inside, the tightness of his walls soft and smooth as silk around his aching cock.  
  
Levi is similarly affected by it. The realization that he's being fucked by Eren, his body thrumming with pleasure, feeling how incredibly hard Eren is, how smooth, how warm, how focused and careful he's being with him, and he knows his end is near.  
  
"Eren," he pants. "I'm close."  
  
Levi's eyes snap open and he moans loudly at Eren's sudden change of pace. He's no longer being fucked slowly, and though he didn't think it possible, it's even better than before. It's so intense that it makes his toes curl, and he loses his breath as his muscles tense and tremble uncontrollably. Eren is moaning too, a breathy exclamation accompanying every uneven thrust, and it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.  
  
Eren pounds against him, once, twice, and then, with a shout, Eren shoves forcefully into him, all the way to the hilt. Levi then feels another entirely new sensation. There's a sudden warmth flooding him, and he feels the swelling and pulsing of Eren's cock, the tremors of Eren's unsteady body pressed against him.  
  
Levi succumbs to the feeling of Eren coming inside him. In all of his lives, he's never felt anything like it; it's so good, so strong and hot and incredibly intense. With a whine, he comes, and stars explode behind his eyes, vision suddenly gone black. He arches and spills across his own body, semen running over his side, pooling in his navel, his body convulsing, feeling as if warm water is flowing over every inch of his already overheated skin. He feels like he is floating, lightheaded and dizzy, everything around him wavy and rippled.  
  
For a moment, they're still, and the world around them is silent but for their panting, blood rushing in their ears like the sound of crashing waves, their hearts hammering in their chests.  
  
They remain in silence; hearts and bodies still joined as one, motionless, the heat of their exposed skin cooling in the darkness.  
  
_I love you._

 

 


End file.
